


Staying Alive

by fabricdragon



Series: Vampire Shuffle [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Additional Warnings Apply, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blackmail, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Character Turned Into Vampire, Developing Relationship, F/M, Homophobic Language, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Manipulation, Mind Control, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Sort Of, Tags May Change, Threats, Vampire Jim, Work In Progress, canonical up to Jim Moriarty's death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-10
Updated: 2019-02-03
Packaged: 2019-04-21 05:12:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 31,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14277624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fabricdragon/pseuds/fabricdragon
Summary: Jim Moriarty shot himself on the roof and died.... and thats the BEGINNING of this story.  Now he just has to figure out what it means to be a vampire in modern London.Vampire AU plotbunny that wouldn't leave me alone until i wrote it down.Note: this is a vampire story and there are going to be incidents of dub con and non con touching and biting /feeding throughout the story.





	1. Chapter 1

Jim woke up.

 _Now that… that was a PROBLEM–_ because Jim certainly never expected to wake up. He lay still, keeping his eyes closed, wondering why… he remembered feeling utterly manic, and depressed– _yeah at once, which sucked, but it happened sometimes_ –and putting the gun in his mouth…

_That was a dumb thing to do… Why did I think that was a thing to do?_

_Oh, right, manic and depressed at the same time._

_Well I’m not making any sense of it lying here…_ He opened his eyes and… _nothing._ His first thought was that he’d gone blind and he panicked: his hand lashed out and hit… _Solid? Close by? Okay, not blind… closed in?_

He started feeling around carefully. _Metal, cold to the touch… and… The fuck am I in the morgue?_ He twisted around to reach the door and tried to get out but… _Really, they should have some kind of safety latch on these things, shouldn’t they?_ He finally found the safety release...

It was broken, because of course it was.

He ended up laying there with his head near the door, trying to doze. He didn’t feel cold–which was odd–and the main thing that annoyed him was the fact that he was nude…

_Hey, where the FUCK are my clothes? Especially my shoes?! Those were custom…_

…

_Also, I’m hungry–kind of. Like… Like I desperately want a Scotch._

…

_Sigh. Survive shooting myself in the head only to starve to death in a morgue drawer? That’s just tacky._

_Or something._

…

The door opened so suddenly that Jim shrieked as the light flooded into his eyes. The man opening the drawer–in a medical jumpsuit with a facemask–screamed in return and scrambled backward.

Jim threw himself out of the drawer, landing clumsily on the floor next to the man and immediately clapped a hand over his mouth through the paper mask. “Ohhhh no, no more of that!” Jim hissed, “Quiet!”

The man’s eyes widened over the mask and he began to struggle, Jim smelled it then: _Fear. Oh, God, it smelled glorious… and… there was a pulse like a drum beat…_

Jim came back to himself with a rich warm taste in his mouth. He looked around in confusion. The man was lying still–pale and barely breathing–he had blood on his neck, and pink skin… pink, new, skin… Jim cautiously ran his tongue over his teeth: _sharp._

 _I am not a bloody vampire!_ Jim thought angrily and then giggled at the pun. He stood up and looked around until he found a reflective surface: it was distorted, but then again it wasn’t a mirror, and he definitely had a reflection…

He looked back at the man on the floor–practical matters first. He stripped him nude and got dressed in his clothing–the medical overalls were a lost cause, but there was probably another set around somewhere. His identification said he was MI5. Jim shoved his now-nude body in the drawer he’d been in; after a moment’s thought, he found a scalpel and cut his throat. _Someone would notice it wasn’t enough blood, but the room did have a drain…_

He found a hose and turned on the water. _Let them think it all washed away._

The clothes fit horribly, and he was much happier when he found a new cover suit and mask. He called for a cab on the man’s phone and slipped out.

He sat in the back of the cab, wondering if he would have to kill the cab driver–Sean, according to the little card. _Seemed like it might draw attention…_

_So I’m a vampire…_

_But I have a reflection…_

_Hmmm... What else might be true?_ When they pulled to a stop light he said, “Sean?” He waited until the man met eyes with him in the mirror– _I definitely have a reflection_ –“Listen to me…” He all but poured persuasion into his voice; the man froze and his eyes fixed on him in the mirror. “You picked up an average height blonde man, with an American accent. You drove him to the train station. Do you understand?”

“Yes…”

Jim nodded, “Drive.”

The cabbie turned toward the train station at the next intersection. One block further, Jim told him to pull over and he stripped out of the medical cover up and got out. He leaned into the window and handed the driver the dead man’s credit cards.

“Go to the train station. Use this to pay. The blonde American got out, paid you and ran off. He left this credit card. I was never here, you don’t remember me.”

Sean-the-cabbie’s eyes tracked back to the front and he pulled smoothly out into traffic without even waiting for Jim to get his fingers clear of the car window.

Jim walked off and tossed the bundled cover-up into a rubbish bin. He doubled back and started making his way to a safe house. After pitching the phone down a sewer, he started thinking.

 _Everyone knows I’m dead: hell, I was in what has to be the intelligence agencies’ private morgue. I can mind control people into doing what I want… well… some people,_ Jim considered. _It hasn’t been tested much._

By the time he reached his safe house, he was starting to smile.

_I still have no idea how this happened, but this is going to be FUN…_


	2. Experiments

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jim starts to work things out; at least he doesn't sparkle.  
> (Non graphic vampire violence and mind control)

He was sitting in his safe house–in some of his own clothes, thank you–reading news and checking his information sources–when the sun came up. The first thing Jim noticed was a rather sudden lethargy, and he reeled from the abrupt change; he’d been so full of energy and awake until…

Jim frowned at the windows and the early morning light just beginning. _Daylight? Vampires don’t like it, right…?_ He shut down the computer and went to bed: he barely made it. His last thought was that _At least there was no sign that I was going to start sparkling or anything…_

~

Mycroft Holmes had finally gotten matters of Sherlock’s “death” settled–his brother was safely hidden just outside of London while they started hunting down the snipers–late that evening. He managed to get home, fall over, and was expecting to get at least a reasonable night’s sleep.

Very early in the morning his phone began to ring–insistently. The third time the caller hung up on the answering machine and called again he gave up.

“Holmes.”

“We have an incident, sir.”

“You damn well better have one to be calling me at this hour!” _Idiots_.

“Someone broke into the morgue, murdered the forensic technician, and stole Moriarty’s body…”

Mycroft took a deep breath. “Video records?”

“The morgue video wasn’t on. Video records show several possible ways for someone to have gotten a body out: we are tracking them, although one, I think, was someone who routinely falls asleep at their desk and gets taken home by a coworker.”

“I will be in as early as possible, follow up all leads…” Mycroft considered, “also look for any possibility of the body simply being destroyed or hidden on site.” _More likely than stolen,_ Mycroft considered _, probably someone wanting to step into Moriarty’s shoes and doesn’t want “proof” that he’s dead_. “Concentrate on someone getting in, and getting out–without a body–as well.”

“Yes, sir.”

Well, it was annoying, but they knew he had people awaiting his orders–and some competitors as well–otherwise, they could have just killed him and moved on… _Curse the man for killing himself! They hadn’t predicted that._ Mycroft sighed and went to make coffee and wake up.

…

Mycroft scarcely had time for tea that day, between dealing with the aftermath of his brother’s death–and Watson was likely to be a genuine problem–and his usual duties. Eventually, he got to the updated report on Moriarty’s body being stolen.

Apparently, someone had left the building using their technician’s identification and wearing his clothing–and, unfortunately, a face mask. The taxi driver described him as American of average height and blonde. He’d left the credit card behind when he got out at the train station.

Likely he had been picked up by a compatriot and gone a different way: the train stations were monitored very thoroughly, and he never went in.

American… it could be the CIA–they’d had disputes with them on occasion–or it could be someone using an American pawn, or feigning an accent, to throw people off. Mycroft thought the last was most likely. In any event he most certainly hadn’t had a body with him.

Vexing.

Still, it’s not like they were dealing with Moriarty any more: it was merely an aggravation.

~

Jim woke up slowly. The room was still dark–he had blackout blinds in his bedroom for a reason–but he knew the sun was going down. He forced himself to get up and go into the other room, cautiously walking to the window and sticking his hand into the fading daylight.

 _Other than feeling intensely lethargic… no problems. Hmmm… So, would direct sunlight actually cook me? Or is it just that I turn into a sloth, not a bat… Do I turn into a bat?_ After consideration, it seemed unlikely: the mass to energy transference would be insane. _A wolf? Maybe… a really big wolf… but bats seemed…_

“I am sitting in my kitchen… after shooting myself in the head… and waking up in the morgue… arguing the physics of vampire transformations,” Jim said thoughtfully. “I’m fairly certain this isn’t covered by ordinary physics or math…”

Hmm. He had that weird thirsty/hungry feeling, not nearly as overwhelming as it was when he woke up. The coffee was certainly nice, but…

 _Right. Blood._ “His neck was just pink… not… open…” Jim was used to talking out loud when solving a problem, and he continued as he got up and wandered the flat with his coffee. “So apparently vampire bites heal over fast… and he was alive, barely… so if I drink a little blood at a time…” He nodded.

_Obviously there were other vampires, and they weren’t widely known, so they didn’t go around killing…_

_Wait…_

_Other vampires. There MUST be other vampires!_ Jim frowned. _They were probably idiots._

He continued pacing. _How did I end up a vampire? Was I bitten by one?_ He had a sudden queasy realization that if he HAD been, and the vampire had told him to forget it–then he probably had forgotten…

The idea that someone could do that to him was chilling.

 _Well, no point in trying to find them and ask them when experimentation was likely to work just as well–more reliable answers, anyway._ He called one of his expendable people.

“Clark? I need you to–“

“Boss?” Clark’s voice was shaky. “I heard you were dead?”

“Obviously not, Clark,” Jim snorted. “Are you sober? I need you to work.”

“Yeah, I only had one…”

“Fuck this up and I’ll pickle you the hard way,” Jim snapped into the phone. “Now listen…”

He gave him instructions even a drunken sot like Clark could manage and hung up; he’d deliberately given him a very short amount of time to manage it in. In the meantime, he started reactivating and contacting the very cream of the crop: the ones he’d always planned on keeping. He gave them all orders: some to meet him after he’d gotten out of London, some to lie low until he contacted them later… of course, his information network would continue regardless.

A few hours later, Clark texted him that he would be in place in one hour. Jim smiled happily and set off.

He arrived at the building via a rather circuitous route. One day this would be luxury flats and shops, but right now? It was a gutted shell that had been a warehouse.

Clark was whining to a group of men about how valuable he was. He’d done exactly as asked: lured them here with the bait of a Moriarty bolt hole and information only he could give them. Pity Clark had been selling information to Mycroft: I’d have let the drunk live if he hadn’t, but he made his choices.

Jim waited for the inevitable: they shot him. When they scattered to search the place, Jim started stalking them.

 _I’m faster?_ he wondered as he moved up quickly behind a man and shot him. _Superhuman fast? No… no… I’m as fast as I was in my prime, that’s all… Damn…_ Jim grinned and kept moving.

The gun had been silenced, but the other men stopped and started wondering what it was…

“Didn’t sound right for a gunshot,” one of them said.

“Too far away for us to worry about,” said another one, and then “Hey! I found a secret door!”

“Really? That’s more like it!” _Aaaah… that was Berber._ Jim smiled wickedly and waited.

The small extra red light over the exit sign lit up a few minutes later–they were trapped. He moved around slowly and picked off the one guard they’d left at the cars.

He waited a good fifteen minutes before he opened the door to the room. There lay Berber and two of his men, out cold on the floor next to a filing cabinet. _Idiots._

He pulled the restraints out of the filing cabinet–now that they’d triggered the gas, it was harmless–and slowly dragged them to one of their cars.

“Now see? This is why I usually have goons…” he grunted as he managed to lift one of them awkwardly into the boot. If they’d been conscious, he was sure they would have complained. _So… not super humanly strong. Just… like I was a bit younger._

He was sweating, and a good bit hungrier, when he finally got all three of them loaded up and set off.

…

Henry Berber fancied himself one of the up and coming criminals in London. He’d made a bit of a name for himself–done some work for Moriarty, even!–but in the end he knew he wanted to be the top man… and that meant striking out on his own.

When he’d heard that Moriarty was dead? Well… he started working hard on getting rid of the competition!

Not that he was alone in that.

It had been a stroke of luck that Clark–the sniveling bum–came to him instead of one of the other fellows, but he was going to make the most of it.

He woke up feeling like someone had taken a bat to the inside of his eyeballs. When he managed to open his eyes finally, he was facing one of his men who was lying on a steel-framed bed… no, handcuffed to a steel-framed bed. The panic burned a lot of the dopiness out of him and he realized he was cuffed to a chair.

“Berber… did anyone ever tell you that you’re an idiot?” an eerily familiar voice said from behind him.

“You’re…” he started to say something and coughed.

Jim Moriarty–alive and well and for some reason stripped to his underwear–sauntered into view and held out a bottle of water. “Need a sip?” He laughed and took a swig.

Henry nodded and Moriarty came over and held the bottle to his lips. Henry tried to keep his eyes down but still watch him. _Moriarty was dangerous–people had been palling around with him one minute and dead the next… and being cuffed to a chair didn’t make for a good start._

“Congratulations, Berber: you’re finally going to be valuable!”

“I am?” He tried to sound confident. “Well, obviously… I mean, I did do valuable work for you! I wouldn’t have done anything if I’d known you were alive…”

Jim laughed, “You? Valuable work? Oh, don’t flatter yourself… but you will be doing valuable work, now.” Jim leaned forward and …

_Did he have FANGS?_

“You see… you and your men are going to help me with an experiment…”

~

He’d run it like a proper experiment: one goon he hadn’t drunk from at all–his blood smelled a bit off anyway–but he’d explored the limits of his mind control with him; one he’d drunk from every night and ordered obedience constantly–by the end of a week he was anemic and almost an automaton; Berber though…. He’d drunk from him lightly every other night and ordered him around, made him forget things, made him do things… It was easier by far when he’d just fed from the man.

He found he could stay up during daylight–at least for a little while–but he was sluggish and thickheaded, and if he closed his eyes for more than a moment… well, he would wake up laying on the concrete more often than not.

At least it didn’t burn him–well, short exposures didn’t–just the stronger the exposure, the more lethargic he got, but even under shelter it was difficult to stay awake once the sun was up.

He’d planned on experimenting just a bit further, but… _Really? Berber? Who wanted him around anyway? He whined…_

He drained Berber dry, and told the anemic goon to help haul Berber’s body, and his funny smelling cohort, into a car. He drove them all out toward a new construction site, cut the funny smelling fellows throat–good luck figuring out all that blood was just from one person–and poured accelerant all over the interior.

He got his poor anemic automaton behind the wheel and told him to drive into the construction site… and tossed the lit match into the back. He obediently drove in a straight line until the car vanished over the edge of the pit.

Jim went back, cleaned up, and went home.

The world was a better place without them in it, and he had a lot more information…

 _Hmmm… perhaps reviewing the folklore, movies and literature would be useful now that I had some clues?_ He’d need to get blood though… and honestly, he hated watching movies with no one to complain to…

A slow smile crept across his face…

_Molly._


	3. Imaginary Comfort

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Molly

Molly Hooper left work late. She was taking longer and longer to get things done–mostly to fill the days up. No one noticed, or, if they did, no one said anything. Mycroft wouldn’t let them fire her, and besides, everyone knew she was depressed…

They were just wrong about why.

How could she go to grief counseling? He wasn’t dead. John… John alternately wanted to talk to her, and wanted to avoid her, and she didn’t know what to do because he HURT and she couldn’t tell him: she’d promised.

Greg was on leave. She didn’t think Mycroft would let him lose his job, but he was being dragged through the press, too–for letting a fraud and a… _Sherlock, oh God… They kept saying he had killed people, kidnapped children!_

Sally was downright smug about it, rubbing everyone’s noses in it. Molly wanted to scream at her, but she just ducked her head and tried to work.

She cried into her diary–a lot. She’d started keeping a print diary again after… after Jim. She tried continuing the blog, but she didn’t know if he read it or not and…

Anyway, she couldn’t write about her life where anyone could get to it, so she just kept it in a book like she used to.

She ordered in food again: they’d just leave it at the door and she wouldn’t have to talk to the delivery person. The first time she ordered in after… after the roof…. she’d had to talk to a delivery boy and he was all going on about the news and the ‘fraud detective’ and she burst into tears and had to stop ordering from them forever.

If it wasn’t for Toby, she probably would have forgotten about food altogether.

 _Funny, it hadn’t arrived yet?_ She’d call them when she got in, she supposed.

She unlocked the door and went in and she could smell the food? _Had… Oh God, please don’t let Meena have come by?_ She put everything down and went in and the food was all set out for dinner for two, and the television was on, and…

Jim was sitting there with the television on and Toby– _the traitor_ –purring happily on his lap being fed bits of…

_But Jim was DEAD!_

~

Molly came in and was calling out for her friend Meena–the one who said old spinsters needed cats or sassy gay boyfriends. Jim grinned to himself. _Well, I suppose she had both, didn’t she?_

She walked in and stared, her eyes tracking back and forth to Toby and Jim, and she was getting paler by the moment. Jim frowned, “Molly Hooper, if you faint I will have to push Toby off my lap to come get you, so you better sit down.”

She walked over very quietly and sat down, staring at him with those pathetic big eyes of hers. He didn’t think he’d pushed? _Shock, probably._

“But you’re dead?”

“Of course I’m dead,” Jim rolled his eyes at her. “I SHOT myself in the HEAD.”

“Oh!” She looked relieved.

“Oh?”

“Well, if I know I’m hallucinating it can’t be that bad, can it? I mean, Sherlock says he sees things in his mind palace all the time….”

 _She thought she was hallucinating?_ He blinked and looked at her, really looked: she looked awful. She had circles under her circles and… “You haven’t been eating properly at all, have you? You’ve even lost some weight, I think?”

She started sniffling. “I’m not hungry… It’s so awful… I just hide in the morgue and the hospital TRIES to keep the press away, but… for a while they showed up here, too.”

Molly always inspired a weirdly mixed desire to hug her and get her a cupcake and a cup of tea, and to hurt her very, very badly. Not for the first time, Jim thought she’d been a bully magnet in school. “You should have told them to go to hell, Molly, but you never did stand up for yourself,” he said, idly petting Toby.

“No,” she shook her head, “I never did. I was so desperate, I didn’t even see you were using me…” She started sniffling. “Why do I hallucinate you, anyway?”

“Good question.” Jim smiled, “Why do you THINK you’re hallucinating me?”

“Probably because I know you’re dead… and I miss when I thought… when I thought you really liked me.”

“I do like you, Mols: I didn’t kill you, after all.”

She started giggling and ended up hiccupping and crying.

“I would expect you to hallucinate Sherlock, or did you finally realize he was only using you too?”

“H-He needs me!” she said defensively, and then her face fell and she sort of crumbled and started crying angry ugly sobs and kicking at the chair. “God… Oh, God you’re right! He… I thought he cared… but it’s just that he needed me, otherwise why would he ask me for help and then… and then just kiss me on the forehead and leave?”

A very bad feeling stole up Jim’s spine. _Present tense?_ He narrowed his eyes and quickly went over the news he’d read: _Sherlock had jumped… been seen to have jumped… hell, there were PHOTOS… and then he was dead._ His ear caught on Molly’s voice as she went on.

“And I can’t TELL anyone, because I promised! And John… John’s devastated and I can’t bear looking at him because I want to tell him… and I can’t!”

Very soothingly and quietly, in his best Jim-from-IT voice, Jim sympathized, “And they all have to think he’s dead, or something awful will happen… but that’s a pretty heavy burden to put on you, Molly… It really isn’t fair, is it?”

“No! No, it isn’t!” Her face was all puffy and blotchy and her little fists kept clenching and unclenching.

“You did a great job for them, though, Molly… no one suspects…” Jim put Toby down and walked over. “You need to eat, you know.”

“I know.” She shook her head, “I’m… I’m not hungry.”

“Stand up, Molly.” He reached down and took her hands and pulled her to her feet.

She startled and stared at his hands. “I can… I can feel you?”

“Oh, yes.”

Her eyes, wide and beginning to be frightened again, tracked up to his face. “But… but…”

He pushed, “You KNOW I’m just imaginary, Molly…”

“…but…” Her eyes were softening. “But I thought you couldn’t feel… imaginary friends…”

Jim laughed, “I’m special.” He pulled her in and sank his teeth into her neck, and before she could scream he closed his mouth and started lapping.

Something about the saliva, he’d found, caused a sort of pleasant paralysis: he suspected people had only the vaguest of memories of being bitten even without mind control. She melted in his arms and didn’t move even when he pulled away.

“I only took a little Molly… but you need to eat.” He pushed gently, “You will remember this, but you will know it’s just your imagination… just someone you can talk to…”

“…Yes, Jim…” She let herself be led to the table and slowly came back to herself as she ate.

“Why did you shoot yourself? I never understood…”

“Why do you think?”

She shook her head, “I have no idea.” She yawned, “Excuse me.”

“You need to sleep, Molly.”

“Yes… I guess I made you up to take care of me?”

“Sure, why not?” Jim laughed. He followed her into her bedroom and watched her get undressed: she wasn’t self-conscious since, after all, he wasn’t really here.

“Molly? What if I came back from the dead? Like… as a vampire?”

“That would be a good story…” she agreed. “I’d read that.”

“Why don’t you? You should start looking up vampire stories, and movies–research, you know?”

“Sherlock would be the better vampire: he looks it, with his coat and all,” she smiled.

Jim rolled his eyes, “Yes but he’s off doing…” _Is he hiding? No…_ Jim thought, _if Sherlock was alive, but he didn’t tell John_ … Jim smirked, “He’s off getting rid of all the scary bad people who might hurt his friends, right? I guess that could be a vampire… That could be a good story, too: like he fell off the roof and woke up and went off to avenge his death…”

She tried to giggle and yawned.

“Go to sleep, Molly–I’ll be back the day after tomorrow and we can watch vampire movies.”

“Ok, Jim…” she sighed and closed her eyes, her dark hair brushing the pink patch on her neck.

Jim chuckled, turned off the light, and went out. _Dinner and a movie, it’s a date._


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> meet Sebastian.
> 
> CHAPTER WARNING for homophobic language, internalized hompphobia and etc (yes on top of everything else)

Jim left Molly’s home and wandered around a bit randomly–it wasn’t even midnight, after all. _Sherlock faked his death–I thought he might, but… The Iceman probably has him off tidying up MI6 business and pretending it’s all about me and my network… I should bite the fuck out of him–oooh into him!_ Jim giggled at the thought of the Iceman melting under him…

“Melts in your mouth…” Jim sang quietly.

He ended up at a club that he adored back in the day–hadn’t been in over a year–it was grungy and loud and didn’t close down until nearly dawn, and no one ever asked questions. Oddly it was populated mostly by retail workers and respectable people in high pressure jobs… a safety valve of sorts. _Oh yes._ Jim remembered when he ended up dancing with someone who smelled of spices _, and after hours cooks letting off steam._

He’d been there for a couple of hours–and taken a couple of people into dark corners for a bit of ‘necking’–when he noticed that one person hadn’t moved much… and they stood out…

He was sitting in a corner booth–prime real estate, really–and all alone. He was muscled and even slouched over a drink he looked good…

Jim slid into the booth next to him, “So how did you manage a booth to yourself?”

The man’s hand shot out and caught Jim by the throat. “By being a scary motherfucker who wants to be left alone!” he growled, almost lost in the thrumming bass of the music.

Jim had dealt with this kind of threat when he was alive, and now that he was something else it bothered him even less. “Ooh, big scary drunk in a corner. If you’re going to choke me, sweetheart, at least buy me dinner first.”

He yanked his hand back as though Jim had burned it.

Jim smirked at him, “A touch homophobic for someone whose ‘hello’ is grabbing a man by the throat…”

He glared at Jim and growled, “Go away, you damn twink–I’m not hiring you and I’m not buying anything you’re selling.”

Jim looked him over: _very drunk, possibly dangerously so, and could still manage that level of eye-hand coordination and reflex? Ooooh come to papa!_ “Come with me.” Jim pushed.

“Fuck OFF!” he snapped and shoved Jim off the edge of the booth.

Jim picked himself up slowly. _Damn… well… damn!_ He was annoyed but a bit intrigued by anyone who could throw off his influence while they were that… _Hmmm… maybe being that drunk made him less susceptible?_ Jim wandered off to test.

Three drunken sots later, Jim was certain that being that drunk should make it EASIER to control someone. _Hmmm._

He walked over to the bouncer. “Hey… my buddy there? I tried to get him to lay off and come home, but… he got kind of pushy.”

“Is that what was up?” he glanced over. “He’s been snarling at people all evening, but he’s buying steadily…”

Jim started pushing, “Yeah, well… he wasn’t reasonable with me either, but he’s going to pass out at this rate, so… when you decide to cut him off? Call me and I’ll get him home.”

The bouncer blinked a few times and nodded. “Sure, I’m just glad he has a friend here to get him home.”

Jim thanked him and went back to dancing, keeping an eye on the man.

Not overly much later the bartender did cut him off, and he started trying to stagger to his feet–Jim got to him quickly.

“Awww… unsteady? Come on, we’ll take a cab home.”

“Go away…” his voice was still way more sober sounding than expected, but his legs weren’t supporting him.

Jim pulled him up against a wall–the man put his arms out for support and it looked like he was embracing Jim, which was what he’d wanted–and bit him.

 _GADALMIGHTY what had the man been drinking! No, better question, what HADN’T he been drinking?! Shit, his blood tasted downright flammable!_ Jim licked it over fast and looked up into his glazed eyes…

“Come with me.” Jim pushed and this time the man slowly nodded and tried to stagger along with him.

 _It’s a good thing I’m stronger,_ Jim marveled as the bouncer had to help get him into a cab. _Hell, this guy is mostly muscle!_

Once Jim got him to one of his places that could hold a prisoner, he realized _Shit, I have no idea if I successfully controlled him, or he was just THAT drunk! Huh…_

He looked at the time: almost dawn. _Fuck… Oh, well._ He stripped the man completely and locked his wrist to the bedframe, made sure several bottles of water and a bucket or two were in range, and locked him in.

He took his wallet into his room to look… at…

“Whatever the patron saint of criminal consultants is–or vampires–I owe them a shrine!” He considered thoughtfully, “I don’t think I could build a shrine to the Devil… faeries? Whatever… I owe SOMEONE big time!”

~

Sebastian Moran just wanted to drink in peace–no, to be honest he wanted to have a raid by insurgents storm the club so he could kill something… _Why the hell couldn’t I have died instead? Colonel Moran, died in service–that would have had a nice ring to it._

And he would never have met Magnussen–he shuddered and swallowed another glass of… whatever the fuck this shite was.

God, how could his sister have been that stupid.

He was trying to figure out if he was drunk enough to pass out once he got home when some faggot slid up next to him and tried to sell his ass… _Oh, Jesus, was the little fuck turned ON by…_ he shuddered again. He finally managed to shove the fucker away and went back to drinking.

Why did every damn queer seem so intent on him all of the sudden? He drank his way steadily through a few more drinks, and tried to forget that the little twink had been kind of cute–I mean, if you swung that way… not like Magnussen.

 _Magnussen… Jesus, no…_ He shuddered again and ordered another drink.

_No? What? Well, I’ll just go find some other bar, then… when the floor steadied down… must be the beat of the music… vibrations… yeah._

_Oh hey, cutie twink… Wait… what?_

And then there was the most wonderful sensation of… nothing. Pleasant, blanketed nothing–just what he’d been looking for…

_Go with him? Maybe… maybe he could make it all stop…_

…

Sebastian woke up, unfortunately, the familiar spiking pain of a hangover beating at him. He tried to sit up and his arm didn’t move. _It pulled oddly…?_

There was a water bottle on the bedside table… but he couldn’t move his arm? His other arm moved… he managed to struggle with the bottle and drank it and peed in the trash bucket…

 _Fuck it._ He went back to sleep until the headache went away.

…

He woke up and reached for… his hand wouldn’t move and something pulled on it. Slowly he stared at the bottle of water on the bedside table…

 _Wait, hadn’t I done this before?_ He blinked a few times. _No, two water bottles and a bottle of very familiar electrolyte drink… and… a small cup that probably had pills in it… and I have NO idea where I am… but I’m nude and sweaty in a bed…_

_And… my wrist is handcuffed to the bed corner._

He had a moment’s sharp spike of panic–Captured! Torture! Interrogation!–before his mind put things back together… _club… water bottles, buckets, electrolyte… ok… I’d gone home from the club with someone and… um… they were into something kinky?_

He opened the bedside drawer for a handcuff key–nothing.

He got the cup of pills… _Yeah, standard stuff, easily recognized by any military man anywhere._ He took the pills, drank the electrolytes and tried to pull his recollections together.

 _Why am I alone? Did they have to work? Who was… she…_ memories of a wicked smirk and dark brown eyes snapped into focus. _Aw, hell no._

“I am not gay!” Sebastian whispered to himself. “Just because I fucked a few guys in the military… I mean, that’s just desperation, right?” _Jesus, I went home from a club with a GUY…_

 _Where are my clothes?_ He looked around the room: _it was small, no windows… but there were plastic bottles, a bedside table and a few other small objects._ He got out of the handcuffs: it took him longer than it should have, really. He looked around the room: _no clothes, and no wallet, and if that fucking twink stole my wallet…_

The door didn’t open. _Wha?_ It was then that he realized that the hinges to the door were on the outside and it was a steel security door.

Sebastian slowly went back to the bed and waited, eyes locked on the door like a big cat watching a mouse hole.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> continuing homophobic language... blackmail, and threats  
> (as a reminder, Jim has been a vampire for under two weeks, and is still getting the hang of this... also his scheduling has been thrown all out of whack.

Jim woke up to the sound of his alarm going off: he’d set it for a bit before sunset. He was still sluggish and dull, but he managed to get up enough to take a shower and put on some coffee before actual sunset. He was determined to pry some usable time back from daylight–he’d just have to train up to it, that’s all.

_Now to go fetch one Sebastian Moran–one of Her Majesty’s bestest snipers–from his cell and find out what the notorious Tiger Moran was doing drunk off his ass in a club._

He had his hand on the door lock when he reconsidered…

“Hey there…” he called in through the door.

“I am NOT a happy man right now…” came a considerably more articulated growl from the other side.

“Oh?” Jim listened carefully–he had noticed his hearing seemed a touch sharper–“I got you here all safe and sound…”

“Where the fuck are my CLOTHES! And what did you do with my wallet!?”

_Ah… that voice moved a bit too close to the door…_

“Now then, Colonel, if you just put that well-muscled arse back on the bed–”

There was a snarl that did credit to Moran’s nickname followed by a great deal of swearing in a language Jim didn’t know–he resolved to learn it, it sounded emphatic–eventually, he switched to English, “–God DAMN Magnussen… you work for the sleazy faggot don’t you?!”

 _Magnussen? Ooh, if Mags was involved…_ “Oh, not in the SLIGHTEST, sweetheart… How on earth do you know Mags?”

“Open the damn door!”

“Whatever does Mags have on you?–that’s his specialty of course, blackmail–it must be pretty good…”

“Open. The. Door!” Sebastian snapped out each word.

“Sit. On. The. Bed!” Jim sang back at him. “I have no interest in having you break my neck, Tiger.”

“If you aren’t involved with that”–there were a few words in that terribly expressive language again–“then why did you kidnap me and how do you know my nickname?!”

“I keep an eye on interesting news, Colonel, and the infamous Tiger Moran was NEWS… once I looked through your wallet…”

A groan…“Just fucking SHOOT me!”

“I’m trying to avoid that, actually… Now, daddy is about out of patience, so SIT on the damn bed so I can open the door.”

“Fine!” he made scuffing noises.

“Not STUPID, Colonel.” His voice developed an edge.

 _Fuck, the room's bugged…_ Sebastian sagged and went and sat on the bed.

Shortly afterwards, the door opened. Sebastian tensed, but the man had a gun aimed straight at him. “Before you do anything we’d both regret, Colonel… I won’t aim to kill you, and you wouldn’t like how much damage this would do.”

“Why the fuck wouldn’t you aim to kill me?!”

“Because you seemed fairly suicidal? You might think it was appealing.”

Sebastian started rubbing at his forehead. “Wonderful, just fucking wonderful.”

“May I say I’m terribly impressed with your kill ratio and the range you took down–”

“Just get on with it, what do you want?”

“You.”

“I’m not a fucking queer!”

“Your sex life is entirely irrelevant to your abilities as a sniper, Colonel,” Jim smiled unpleasantly, “but if you keep insulting mine I could change my mind about your usefulness.”

“You were coming onto me in the club…”

“So? I was curious: good-looking fellow–if you like your sort–sitting all alone in a corner booth?”

“Why should I work for you?” Sebastian was watching for any sign of weakness, but so far the gun hadn’t wavered once… _Wait, it moved… Ahhhh the man was used to gesturing._

“Money, influence… getting dear old Mags off your back…”

“And just HOW can you do that?”

“Well, that depends on what he has on you,” Jim said reasonably. “It could range from a simple removal of some evidence to faking your death… faking your death seems popular this season.”

“Are you out of your mind?”

Jim snickered, “You are not the first person to ask me that; probably won’t be the last. In any event–”

Sebastian had been watching and waiting and when the twink with the remarkably steady hands gestured just a bit much–he moved. He knocked the gun aside and down and had the man against the door frame with an arm locked against his throat.

“Now tell me where you put my wallet and I MIGHT let you live.”

“Quick… strong… all that, and a sniper, too. Pity you seem so intent on throwing it away…” Jim was considering the position he was in and decided to play tame for a bit.

Sebastian leaned into his throat, “Where?” His eyes tracked aside… _Well, of course it wasn’t in here._ He shifted his grip on the man and turned him so his back was against Sebastian’s chest.

“For someone so rude about gay people you sure do have a hard on…” The man’s voice was a bit raspy but clear.

“Shut UP, you damn–” and the world dissolved into a pleasant nothingness.

~

Jim had never tested biting anyone anywhere but the neck, but hey, if Moran wanted to put his wrist RIGHT THERE… He bit down and started feeding and Sebastian went under. Jim turned him and walked him back into the room and pushed him onto the bed…

“My,” he said between gentle laps at his wrist, “you really do have a death wish don’t you?”

Sebastian just laid there, eyes half open… lips parted slightly… _So Magnussen had his hooks into him, hmm? That meant there were hooks to play…and it certainly did seem fascinating how resistant to control he was…_

Jim closed the skin on the man’s wrist and walked out, picking up the gun as he left, and locking Colonel Moran back inside–he hadn’t seen darling Mags in years…

~

Magnussen was at home, with one of his newest playthings. She was ordinary enough in appearance but as the secretary of one of the more powerful people in London industry? She was very attractive indeed.

Which is why he was exceedingly annoyed when one of his guards came in and announced that he had a visitor.

“I wasn’t expecting anyone: get rid of them.”

“Really, Mags?” a very familiar– _and DEAD, damn it_!–voice came from behind the guard. “You would think I wasn’t always welcome…” Jim Moriarty–born James Doyle and with a file fifteen pages long and not one piece of leverage stronger than “easily bored”–walked in.

Magnusson glanced at the secretary trying not to cower away from him. “Get out,” he told her, and the girl scrambled for the door. “James… an unexpected pleasure.” _You should be so very, very dead_. He nodded at the guard to leave as well.

“Oh, I’m sure… but you wouldn’t have anything to do with that…” Jim laughed and then paused as he smelled fear. Magnussen’s face showed nothing out of the ordinary, but his smell? _He was afraid? Why?_

“I had heard that you committed suicide. Naturally, it seemed unlikely, but…” he shrugged expressively.

“Oh DO tell me what you thought…” Jim pushed–hard.

“I thought the pills would–” Magnussen froze.

Jim circled closer and he could feel a predator’s glide moving into his walk. “Really, Maggie? Sweetheart? You wound me to the quick…” He lunged and pushed him up against a chair. “Tell me allll about it.”

“You’re mad… You can’t do anything to me here!”

Jim climbed into his lap and put his hands on either side of his head. “Why not, Magsie dear?” Jim whispered. “I’m dead, remember?”

Magnussen, terror in his eyes, began to inhale to scream–to call for help–and Jim sank his fangs into the man’s throat.

Hell, he’d wanted to rip his throat out with his teeth as a HUMAN… he held by back an effort of will.

He did let himself take a good bit more than strictly needed…

Jim settled himself comfortably in Magnussen’s lap–if anyone looked in, they would see what they probably expected. “Tell me about the pills, Mags.”

“Your migraine pills…” Magnussen smiled faintly. “You fill them at the same pharmacy… all the time…”

“Mmm-hmmm… What did you do? It must have been soooo clever…”

“You’re bi-polar, anyone could see that… Dosed them with a drug…”

“Ooooh, cunning… Made my bi-polar go out of control?”

“Triggers depression…” Mags tried to come back up and Jim leaned forward and pushed just a bit more.

“So that I would kill myself… nice… neat…”

“You’re far too dangerous… no leverage…”

“You’re an idiot, Mags: you never would have gotten as far without me.” Jim smiled, “But I’m not an up-and-coming psychopath anymore, and I guess I was competition?”

“Yes.”

A thought suddenly crossed Jim’s mind. “Do you know anything about vampires?”

“Myths…”

“No: real ones… current ones…”

Mags tried to say no, bless his shriveled black heart, but instead he breathed, “I know someone who believes in them...”

“Tell me everything you know...”

…

It was just before dawn as Jim got back to his safe house. He’d almost forgotten to find out what Magnussen had on Colonel Moran, but he’d gotten that settled…

And he had the name of one of Magnussen’s ‘clients’ who believed in vampires… who Magnussen had written off as too unbalanced and too low level to be really useful except as a leverage point against Sherlock Holmes, and from Sherlock to Mycroft…

Magnusson had put the man aside once Sherlock died–after all, leverage on a dead man was not very useful–but still had a hook in play just in case. Not like he ever threw away leverage.

Jim was staggering and staying awake by force of will getting into the safehouse. He opened the hidden (and too small for a person) access hatch into Moran’s room and shoved in some food and more water…

His last thought before he fell asleep on the rug was _I’ll have to ask Phil Anderson a LOT of questions…_


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> negotiations...   
> (if he was any deeper in the closet there would be a sledge and some Turkish delight)

Sebastian woke up… again… _how the hell?_ He sat up–a bit too fast apparently, because his head spun–and tried to look around. He drank the last of the bottled water and electrolyte and tried to figure it out.

He’d talked through the door: the guy knew Magnussen but claimed he wasn’t working for him. Sebastian considered: he’d used a derivative–‘Mags’ –which Magnussen would not have liked. He knew it was probably blackmail… but he didn’t know what the blackmail was.

_He wanted me to work for him. He knew who I was AFTER he got my wallet, which means… after he picked me up in the club…_

_So why did he pick me up in the club? Payback for dumping him?_

Sebastian got out of bed and tried to pace. It didn’t work well, but it helped him think.

 _I’d had the little twink… disarmed–and I’m not wounded–and…_ Sebastian frowned. He carefully went over it step by step, visualizing exactly where he’d been: _Right… I turned him, held him up against me… he made a comment… ummm…_

_Yeah I had been hard. That was… that was just… I mean, it happens, right?_

_And that was the last thing I remember. Something very pleasant and… nothing. Just a sort of soft warm nothing…_

He eventually scraped up a memory of the twink leaning over him on the bed and… saying something but… nothing.

So the twink had drugged him with something that worked fast, alright. He hadn’t bothered re-doing the handcuff… locked him in and left.

Sebastian started methodically searching the room. After a while, he found a small access hatch type of door, down at floor level: it was locked from the other side and didn’t budge. It was far too small to get through, but he’d hoped he could reach something.

Eventually he lay back down on the bed and started going over his favorite firearms in his head.

…

The sound of a bolt sliding open snapped him awake instantly.

He was looking hopefully at the door, so didn’t see the hatch open until a bottle of water rolled across the floor–he got out of bed in time to see a tray with MREs and meal bars, and several more bottles of water and electrolytes, get pushed through. The hatch fell shut.

Sebastian dived for it and missed. The hatch had no way of getting hold of it on this side and he didn’t have anything to pry…

He retrieved an empty water bottle and started working. It took him far longer than he was happy with to get a plastic strip worked from it… but then he slid it into the hatch and…

Success! He hadn’t re-bolted it! _I knew I didn’t hear the bolt close_.

He lay down and opened the hatch, blocking it open with the tray. What he saw made him very, very worried: his captor was lying passed out–or dead–on the rug about 7 feet away.

~

Jim woke up muzzily to his alarm going off. _Right, not sunset yet…_ He tried to push himself up on his arms and fell back down. _I’ll just nap for a bit long–_

“Oh, thank God, you ARE alive!”

 _Wrrr?_ Jim cracked an eye open blearily and eventually tracked to… the hatch, which was propped open on a food tray and there was a face. He shook his head and tried to focus… _Who?_ “Fuck, it’s too early for this…”

“I thought you’d died and left me locked in here, you know.”

 _Oh… shit… That would be bad…_ “Uh, no? Sorry… Lemme get my coffee…” Jim worked to get to his feet and forced himself to go to the kitchen and not the bedroom.

“I deserve a cup! At least!” shouted a rather understandably upset sniper.

Jim leaned on the doorframe and sighed. “Okay, point. How do you take it?”

“Black.”

“Mags’ soul, got it: black as the devil and no sweetness in it.” Jim staggered off.

Sebastian couldn’t help but snicker at that… _How do you take it? Black as Magnusson’s soul. Cute_. He sat up and waited. Eventually, a cup was held through the hatch.

“Don’t try anything, or I will leave you in there…”

“I’m not stupid; besides, I might spill the coffee.”

Jim chuckled.  Sebastian sat next to the hatch and sipped his coffee… _Damn_ … “This is… really good coffee.”

“Never settle for second best–that’s why I wanted to hire you.”

“You weren’t trying to ‘hire’ me in the club.”

“No, I was curious as to why a good looking guy was using up the prime corner table all alone. Then you threatened me.”

“Most people back off.”

Jim laughed, “I am a lot of things, Tiger, but ‘most people’ isn’t one of them.”

“I’m not” –he considered and reconsidered several words–“gay.”

“Oooooooooh honey, you’re so deep in the closet you can see Narnia from there. Tell me another one.”

“I’m NOT.”

“I’ll believe you if you can tell me honestly you have had sex with fewer than two men,” Jim grinned into his coffee, “any kind of voluntary sex counts.”

He listened to the extremely significant silence and grinned some more, “I’ll make it easier, Tiger: fewer than four?”

“… It doesn’t mean anything… I was in the military…”

Jim cackled, “You are at LEAST bisexual, or you wouldn’t find it that enjoyable to repeat the experience…” He put a sympathetic tone in his voice–even if he didn’t feel that sympathetic, frankly he wanted to keep laughing–“Besides, anyone who is THAT homophobic? That’s called self-hatred right there. You just don’t like admitting I turn you on.”

“You don’t,” Sebastian said immediately. He wished he felt more certain about it.

He heard the man getting up. “Pass your cup out and I’ll refresh it.”

“It’s starting to smell in here, you know.”

“So… given that I paid a visit to Magnussen last night–or this morning, depending on your point of view–and that you are in a piss-poor bargaining position… your sister is really cute for a girl, you know?”

“Leave. Her. Alone!” Sebastian growled.

“I’m not bothering her–and neither will Mags–if you behave.”

“…fine!” Sebastian snapped. He wondered just what kind of degrading things he would have to do…

“Then I’ll let you out and you can take a shower and eat… and dump those buckets.”

“I’m not interested in you and I–”

“Yes, you are… and that’s not part of the deal, sweetheart. I’ve never had to blackmail anyone into my bed yet–I don’t intend to start.” His voice moved away. After a few minutes, the door unlocked.

Sebastian watched warily as the door opened. The twink stood there smirking. “My name’s Jim… incidentally.”

“Sebastian,” he said, wondering why the little twink looked familiar. “Have you been stalking me?”

“First time I saw you was in the club–why?”

“You look familiar.”

“Jim Moriarty? Crown jewels? Richard Brook, actor?” He waved at himself and then stepped back to let Sebastian out of the room.

A sudden recollection of Harry’s–Captain Branson’s–news clippings sprang to mind. “You… you were wearing the crown jewels?” He edged past him and only felt safe once the door couldn’t be closed on him again.

Jim wrinkled his nose. “Shower, definitely. Yes, I broke into the crown jewels–found not guilty on all counts of everything, though.”

“One of the other men had… some photos of you,” Sebastian said slowly. He remembered all too well Harry’s admiration of the man’s figure in a suit.

 _What kind of photos was he thinking of to get THAT expression on his face?_ “Nude?” Jim asked. “Because I don’t think there were any nude photos of me that weren’t Photoshopped.”

“No! In suits, mostly, and sitting in with the crown jewels and WHERE ARE MY CLOTHES!” Sebastian shouted as he remembered he was nude–he’d gotten used to it.

Jim raised an eyebrow. “I sent them to the cleaners–they stank–and you get them back after you shower.”

“You are NOT watching me shower!”

“You are in a really bad bargaining position,” Jim said pointedly, “and besides, I’m getting an eyeful right now–but if it bothers you that much, why not try ‘Please’ or ‘Sir’ or something.”

“I would prefer a bit of privacy. Sir.” Sebastian forced the words out through gritted teeth.

“Certainly!” Jim smiled. “Bathroom’s in there…” and waved him in.

Sebastian closed the door behind him and leaned on the sink. _How the hell could he be that damn… confident, sexy, charismatic–wait, no… not sexy._ Sebastian groaned and started looking through the bathroom supplies: there were a lot of them; if he didn’t know the guy was gay his bathroom would have given it away.

When he finally felt like he wasn’t covered in grime and old sweat, he came out and pulled on the robe–it was too small for him but it was better than nothing–then he took a deep breath and stepped out into the…

 _Food_! The smell of food pulled him out into the kitchen, where he found the guy– _Jim? Right, Jim_ –setting out plates. There were boxes of some kind of fancy carry out.

“I assume you aren’t vegetarian or anything?” Jim asked casually.

“I have my likes and dislikes,” Sebastian answered cautiously, “but I can eat almost anything.”

“Well, in the interests of simplicity–and not knowing your tastes–I ordered a steak dinner.” Jim waved at a seat. “Sit down, Colonel, and let’s talk business.”

“You talked to Magnussen?” Sebastian asked him as he carefully sat down. Jim put a platter of expensive steak dinner down in front of him.

“Oh, yes. Your sister was very foolish; also, she has terrible taste in men.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Sebastian grumbled.

“Mags had him on the hook too, you know… so even if you managed to pay back the money she embezzled…”

Sebastian swore vehemently. “He would have gotten her to do it again, or needed me to give her more money?”

“Which would keep you working for Mags,” Jim smiled. “Elegant, really, especially with you unable to get most jobs with your discharge...”

 _Except work for people like Magnussen… and you…_ “And now?”

“I’ll front you the money to fix the embezzlement issue, AND I’ll arrange to disappear her boyfriend: your call whether I just send him on his way or have him die tragically…”

“If it’s not traceable, I’d like him out of the way permanently,” Sebastian growled.

“Certainly,” Jim nodded regally and then sat back. “She needs someone to keep her on a shorter leash, or this will happen again.”

“I… know,” Sebastian admitted. “She…”

“So I have a lovely solution to your problems.” Jim smiled–and Sebastian almost imagined his teeth sharpening. “As it happens, I know an ex-military man with a taste for rescuing people. He’s a bit heartbroken right now, as he just watched his best friend commit suicide–”

“What?! Oh, my God!” Sebastian stared at him horrified.

Jim waved it away. “Oh, he faked it apparently… I still haven’t decided what to do about that.”

“What’s this got to do with my sister?”

“They need a secretary at the medical clinic he’s on leave from.” Jim smiled happily. “I think two single people grieving the loss of their loved ones might just hit it off–don’t you?”


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arrangements with Sebastian, Movie night with Molly, and catching up with Anderson
> 
> TW: dubious consent (Molly doesnt think he's real) and Phil definitely doesnt want Jim around, so... non con touching/threats/fear

Sebastian was torn between wanting to kill the man and bolt–and the certainty that ANYONE was better than Magnussen.

“You don’t touch me,” Sebastian said finally.

Jim just raised an eyebrow. “I do what I want, but like I said: I haven’t had to blackmail anyone into my bed, and I’m not starting with you.”

“You don’t touch my sister.”

“What part of ‘you don’t call the shots here’ do you not get?” Jim tilted his head at him. “But if it makes you feel any better, girls aren’t my interest.” He considered, “Well… honestly? Stupid girls aren’t.”

“She’s not stupid!” Sebastian protested. “She’s just… she’s too…”  Sebastian struggled for words, “too soft-hearted.” It was the wrong word, but he didn’t know how else to explain it.

“A different word for ‘stupid’.” Jim snorted. “Now, I have appointments. I’m going to give you your clothes, and some instructions, and you get your sculpted ass back here by dawn.”

“You were passed out–barely breathing–on the floor for at least 8 hours… maybe you should stay home?”

“Yes, well… I do that.” Jim shrugged. “Incidentally, if you ever have any idiotic thoughts about taking advantage of my… medical condition? Just remember I’m the only one between you and Magnussen–and trust me, he’ll blackmail you into his bed just because he likes the power.”

Sebastian remembered Magnussen touching him–leering at him–and shuddered. “Okay, you win, whatever you want just…” He couldn’t even finish before he had to fight back the nausea.

Jim nodded. “Good, we understand each other.”

Jim went and got a cleaner’s bag of clothes and handed it to him. “Your wallet and things are in the bedroom. Get dressed, and then I’ll give you your instructions.”

~

Jim checked his information sources: Anderson was still on shift, which meant plenty of time to see Molly. He’d almost forgotten his date with Molly, honestly.

He let himself into her flat to find her already sitting on the sofa watching a vampire movie–at least, he assumed it was one.

“What are we watching tonight?”

“Frank Langella’s ‘Dracula’. It’s old.”

Jim got himself a drink and curled up next to her on the sofa, eventually ending up pulling her half into his lap while she shivered and bit her lip at the screen. _God, she was so repressed._

A bit later in the movie, he asked, “Why is he feeding her blood?”

“To control her…” she answered distractedly.

“Wouldn’t that make her a vampire or something?”

“I think only if she’s dying? Shhhh…”

By the end of the movie, he was petting down Molly’s body and watching her squirm; Toby left in a huff after she moved too much. Eventually, Molly started fingering herself–after all he wasn’t ‘really’ there. _Watching her throwing her head back, mouth open, desperately trying to bring herself off…_

 _Sigh. She doesn’t even know..._ “Go into your bedroom, Mols.”

He steered her into the bedroom and finally found a decent hand lotion: it was in a little pretty basket in the bathroom and had never been opened; _come to that, I remember it being here when I came over to watch Glee…_

He pulled his medical gloves out of his bag and set them aside, and then he poured the lotion on her back and started working it in: predictably, she melted.

“You need to grow a spine, Molly. Seriously? I have half an interest in strangling you because you’re such a doormat.” She just made agreeing noises into her pillow.

Eventually he pulled on a glove and started toying with her. “Do you want me to, Mols? You can’t even make it feel good for yourself…”

“I wish you were real…” Molly sniffled into the bed. “I wish you hadn’t been gay… I wish you had really liked me…”

“Stop sniffling, Molly…” He drove his fingers into her with perhaps a touch more force than he intended and she bit back a scream.

“Ow! What?!”

Jim pushed her down into the bed and held her there as he began working with his fingers: pinching, thrusting, finding out what she liked…

“Ahhh!” Molly was bewildered and _Oh God, that felt good,_ but she shouldn’t… she shouldn’t LIKE that… and how… how could it feel like that and he wasn’t REAL and his fingers were pulling her mind apart and he was inside her and pinching and twisting and …

She bit into her pillow as a feeling like… like a vibration started building around what he was doing down there… she tried to buck him off… _It was too much!_

Jim grinned. She was no virgin–she’d told him that on their dates, being worried he would be upset–but apparently her lousy taste in men was not new. He thrust in with his fingers and rolled her clitoris under his thumb.

She tried to buck him off, squirming away as it became intense: he held her down and kept at it; eventually, she spasmed and screamed into the pillow, lying there panting and gasping as she soaked the bed.

He peeled off his glove and dropped it in the basket.

“You need a better class of boyfriend–or girlfriend. Sleep tight, Molly.” He licked her neck behind her ear. “I’ll be back another night…”

She lay there, trying to get her breathing under control… trying to understand… _Was that… was that what..? It never felt like that…_

~

Jim shook his head as he left Molly’s… Maybe he should send her some self-help books? “How To Not Be A Doormat”. There had to be a few books on the subject. He sat in the cab and looked up books on his phone, putting together an order. He was honestly a bit surprised when the cab driver told him they’d arrived.

He looked around thoughtfully. _Not a bad neighborhood._ He’d had Anderson’s address from way back, but never actually been here. _So this is where Donovan ‘scrubbed floors’ was it?_

_Whatever did she see in him anyway? Women! If I live to be 100, I will never…_

_Wait…_

_If I’m a vampire… how long…?_

Jim was so busy wondering about that that he ended up walking up and ringing the bell, not just picking his way in.

His musings were interrupted by someone yanking open the door he was leaning on.

“HEY!” Phil yelped as the man tumbled onto his floor. “The hell were you doing leaning on my door you–” He cut off abruptly as the man picked himself up.

“You’re Richard Brook…” Phil said, blinking at him stupidly.

“No kidding.” Jim brushed himself off. “Close the door, Phil.”

Phil closed the door by habit and stood there gaping at the man. “You… you were supposed to be dead? Like Sherlock? What?”

“Your wife home?” Phil shook his head and started to talk again. “Sally?” Jim asked.

“No one’s here! What are you doing here?! How did you… what do you want?!”

Jim smiled and walked up to the man, watching as he tried to stand his ground and puff himself up. Jim reached up slightly and put his arms around Phil’s shoulders. “Why, I wanted to talk to you…”

Phil angrily shoved the man aside and started back to the door. “Get out!” He was grabbed by a shockingly strong grip on his arm and spun into the door. Before he could react Richard was pushing him back.

“Not so fast, Phillip. I understand from Magnussen that you have some information I want…”

Phil’s eyes widened almost comically. “What?! Look, what do you WANT? He wanted information on Holmes–well, he’s a fraud, there’s nothing more to find out…!”

Jim laughed, still keeping him pinned up against the door. “Sherly? Sherly wasn’t a fraud–an ass, certainly, but not a fraud. I planted all that evidence… you and Sally were terribly useful that way…”

“What?” Phil thought back over all the evidence that never made sense, the things he’d SEEN Sherlock do. “You… framed him? But… aren’t you an actor?”

Jim smirked up at him, “Jim Moriarty, consulting criminal, at your service. Did you honestly think a hired actor would have made it through the courts? I honestly thought that would be the thing to give it away…

“But so many people hated Sherlock that they suspended their disbelief…” Jim leaned in against Phil; resting against his chest, feeling his heart beat… it was beginning to speed up…

“He’s dead…”

“Mmmm, no,” Jim shook his head. “He faked it.”

“Faked jumping off a roof? How?!”

“Haven’t bothered to find out,” Jim shrugged. He pulled on Phil’s arm and Phil reluctantly followed him to the big chair: it was out of place with the rest of the décor. _He probably got it to feel in control and important_ , Jim considered, _it was leather and everything else in the house was cloth… it was dark and everything else was lighter. It was a very masculine chair._

“Sit down, Phil.”

Phil glared at him, “You tell me you’re a real criminal, not an actor… that you framed Sherlock Holmes… and that neither of you are dead–I’m calling Lestrade!”

Jim pushed, “Sit DOWN, Phil.”

Phil sat down. _No… No… Nononononono…_

“I didn’t say **neither** of us was dead, Phil…” Jim smiled and let his fangs show.

Jim had expected Phil to scream, or try to run, or refuse to believe it, but he just froze and started shaking.

“You were in court…” he whispered. _That was daylight, it wasn’t… it couldn’t be…_

“Imagine my surprise when I woke up in the morgue,” Jim said as he walked around Phil’s chair and draped himself over the back of it, breathing into Phil’s neck. Phil’s head went down and… _was he crying?_

“Just kill me…”

Jim stroked a hand down his neck: Phil obligingly bared his throat. “No need to be dramatic Phil… I just need you to tell me everything you know about vampires…”


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anderson...

When Phil had graduated from school–back when he still dreamed of being an artist–he had taken the time off to go to Europe and travel. He’d wanted to see the art in person, not just in books–to stand in the places he’d only read about.

It was at times exhilarating… and at times mundane…

He’d been sketching in Italy–seated at a small café–when someone spoke just behind him in Italian.

“I’m sorry, I don’t speak much–” he’d cut off suddenly, unable to finish. She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Even years later he couldn’t tell you her age–she’d had a youthful face and body, but her poise and her eyes said age and experience–but if there was ever a woman who was out of his league? This was her.

“You have talent,” she’d said in accented English.

Somehow he’d ended up in her house. She had art on every wall, and statuary, and he’d spend hours wandering the house, sketching. She worked all day; _an art gallery,_ he thought. Some days she said her name was Isabelle, and sometimes it was Sophia– _she was a noble, and probably had three or four names._ Some nights she spent with him talking, usually about art; once or twice he’d ended up in her bed. His days went by in a glorious haze.

It took him weeks before he realized that he hadn’t written home… or called… and when he tried to leave the house to mail a letter he found that he couldn’t.

_Oh, yes, she’d said not to? Something… about… was it a bad neighborhood?_

When she came home that night, he asked her about the post office–his Italian was improving slowly, even if her English was excellent.

“Silly boy, you don’t need to write anyone.”

_Oh, of course not… how silly._

She took him to bed that night and it was wonderful, but he must have had too much wine because the next day he could barely get out of bed. Her servants brought him food and broth and he spent the next few days resting. She checked up on him–sitting with him and talking about art, and a trip she had planned for them. He didn’t get much better, being weak and dizzy.

She owned a yacht, apparently, and thought the sea air would do him well… and perhaps a trip to Greece…

He’d always wanted to go to Greece… She said it was wonderful.

He heard voices, angry voices, the night before they were leaving–she was going to work and then they would go to her yacht and wouldn’t it be beautiful with the stars and the sea… voices… angry voices.

He managed to get to his feet and staggered to the stairs… he heard a gunshot and tried to run…

He saw her standing there, bloody, on the stairs, with a group of men with guns standing below her. She was shouting at them and two of them dropped the guns and he had to save her… and he tumbled down the stairs into the dark.

…

“I’d fallen down the stairs into her… knocked her down,” Phil said quietly, not meeting Jim’s eyes.

Jim had moved them to the–atrocious looking, but comfortable–sofa. Once Phil had started talking, Jim just made encouraging noises: it seemed like he’d wanted, needed, to talk about it for a long time.

In the pause, Jim sighed, “Tea?”

“Tea?”

“I assume you do HAVE tea in the house?”

“But… you don’t drink… Uh, yes I could use some…”

Jim raised an eyebrow, “I certainly do drink tea, even if coffee is nice too.”

Phil actually looked up, startled, “But…I thought you couldn’t…”

Jim considered, “Your information is either wrong, or incomplete. I can certainly drink tea–I can eat normal food too, although I think my tastes are changing.” Everything did seem rather more heavily seasoned…

“Oh…”

“Go make tea–and if you try anything idiotic… Well, I assume you have SOME sense?”

“Apparently not,” Phil muttered. He got up and made tea. Jim listened but Phil had left his phone charging and he didn’t hear anything that sounded like trouble.

Phil came back with tea–it was horrid. Jim stared at it after he took a sip, “Are you trying to annoy me? Or are you completely useless at making tea?”

Phil sat down, curling around himself as much as he could. “I…”

 _Sigh_. “Never mind. So you were rescued by these…?”

“Vampire hunters,” Phil answered. “They said they hadn’t thought I was still alive–truthfully, I’m not sure they cared. She picked up people like me… students out wandering, people without a set itinerary… mostly artists. By the time anyone realized we were missing–well, no one would have known where to look besides ‘Italy’ in my case.”

“So how did they kill her?”

“Beheading… after… after the gun shots weakened her. and I toppled her down the stairs–I broke her control over some of them.”

“Why didn’t all of them put the guns down?” Jim asked curiously–he’d noted that part of the story.

“Apparently some people are just more resistant. I’m not… obviously.”

 _Hmmm… Moran being resistant would make sense, and could be useful…_ “They told you vampires didn’t eat or drink? Or you assumed it?”

“I… guess I assumed, and… they said to keep an eye out for people who are only out after dark, and never eat–always ate earlier, or had some excuse…”

“Huh. It never occurred to me I couldn’t? Maybe it’s just something some vampires believe.” Jim shrugged. “Or maybe my tastes will keep changing.”

An expression of curiosity flashed across Phil’s face. “Maybe it’s like the strength? And the other things?”

“What about them?”

“Vampires… get stronger. They get stronger as they get older. They get faster, and stronger, and… better at the control, usually, She was probably turned into one during the war, from what they said…”

“That would make sense,” Jim said thoughtfully. “So… what happened with you?”

“Once I could, I went home.” Phil looked down at his tea cup. “I studied police work and forensics–mostly to try to spot any… any vampires that were killing people. I’ve seen a lot of things that were suspicious, but nothing conclusive.”

“…and report it to the other hunters? So you still have any contact with them?”

Phil shook his head. “I… I did for a while, but… over time… I think most of them are dead–one of them was locked up for being insane…”

“Name and location…” Jim said calmly pushing a pad and pen over at him.

“What?”

“Their name and their last known location. I have connections and I want more information.”

“Can’t you just ask… the vampire that turned you? Or did he send you off on some weird scavenger hunt–” Phil sagged. “He did, didn’t he…”

Jim feigned amusement. “What did your vampire hunters tell you about how someone gets turned, Phil?”

“They… they didn’t know for sure. Just that really young vampires are usually pretty close to their… uh… parent? While they’re learning.” Phil was still holding the cup of tea like it was a lifeline. “They’d be too obvious and get themselves killed–or alert people–otherwise.”

Jim didn’t feel like admitting he was on his own and rather in the dark–figuratively and literally. “He wanted to see how far I could get on my own.” Jim shrugged in a dismissive fashion. “Which I prefer anyway.”

Phil sipped at the tea shakily. “So it’s… gotta be close to dawn.”

Jim checked his watch and… _damn, it was getting close, especially for a trip across town–fuck_. He texted the cabbie to pick him back up.

“I… cooperated. Please just–”

“Oh, I have a LOT more I want to talk to you about, Phil,” Jim said firmly–Phil cringed–“but I’m a reasonable man…” Jim walked over and took the cup out of his hands.

“…please… don’t…” Phil said, shaking violently as Jim walked around behind him.

“Just a little, Phil, you’ll hardly notice.” Jim pushed his head to the side and bit him–he tasted of fear and despair… that odd unpleasant ashy/bitter taste that he’d gotten off of Berber once he’d given up fighting back. Jim only took a little and then he licked it closed and walked back around to face him.

He waited until Phil’s eyes cleared some and then he pushed. “You won’t tell anyone you saw me, or do anything to indicate my survival… or any connection with vampires: clear?”

Phil nodded.

“If you come across any information about Sherlock Holmes, vampires, vampire hunters, me, or anything you think I would want to know… you will contact me as soon as you can without getting caught.” Jim put his card down.

In a normal voice he continued, “Honestly, Phil… I’m not that bad to deal with, unless you cross me–which you won’t, of course.”

Phil swallowed hard, “No, of course not.”

“Yes, well… gotta run, people to do, things to see…” Jim walked out the door. “DO try to figure out how to make a decent cup of tea…”

Phil saw a taxi waiting for Jim when he opened the door; he got in without a backward glance and left.

Phil closed the door, bolted it, and ended up curled against it, shaking, for a while. He didn’t feel safe at all until he saw daylight through the cracks in the door, and then he opened every blind and every curtain in the house.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Enter Rosamund...
> 
> (and yes, Sebastian internalizes a lot of homophobia... if he lives long enough he'll improve)

Sebastian slunk out to run the errands Jim wanted; afterwards, he went home to his apartment and packed.

“Why the fuck don’t I just shoot the little twink? Or at least ignore him now that he doesn’t have me locked in?” Sebastian grumbled as he rolled up his clothes and loaded them into a duffel.

He spotted the empty hanger where his favorite shirt had hung–but he’d worn that to meet with Magnussen, and then he’d burned it. “Right… Magnussen,” Sebastian shuddered–the reason he was going to be a VERY good, quiet employee until this all blew over.

After he packed the critical things, he looked at his watch: Jim had said to be back by dawn; he had a couple of hours yet. He debated briefly, but… his sister worked an early shift and was usually up by now.

He braced himself and picked up the phone. She answered it surprisingly quickly. “Rose?”

Rosamund jumped when the phone rang. _Oh, thank GOD it was John_. “J-John?”

Sebastian frowned, “Rose, what’s wrong?” _She was calling me John, shit this was bad._

“Remember my boyfriend?” Rose sank into a chair and hugged the phone to her ear.

“Yeah, remember me threatening to kill the sonofabitch?” Sebastian growled, “I’ve made arrangements to get the money back… but seriously, you have to break up with the scum.”

“…I… I…” Rose started crying on the phone.

“Rose? Sis? What’s wrong?”

“I think he’s dead…”

Sebastian blinked abruptly at the phone. _Jim arranged it that fast?_ “Dead?”

“He… he hit me.”

Sebastian’s temper blew up. “I’LL KILL HIM!”

“–and I think I killed him.”

“Good!... Wait… What?” _Oh Jesus Christ, not again…_

“I need help,” Rose admitted.

“I’ll be right there,” Sebastian sighed. He threw the bags into the rental car and drove to his sister’s. _This was just too fucked up for words._

Rose let him in after checking to make sure he was alone. She hugged him and he frowned at the developing bruises on her face. “If he’s LUCKY, you killed him,” Sebastian growled.

She shook her head, “He’s not dead… he woke up after you called…”

“Where is he?”

“I didn’t know what to do, so I tied him up in the bathtub.” She started crying again, “I thought… I thought he loved me…”

“Rose, honey…” Sebastian sighed; his sister had the worst fucking taste in men. “I’ve arranged to get this all fixed, but…”

“I didn’t want you to get involved!”

He grabbed her and shook her, “Make some sense, Rose! You’re all I’ve got, and I’ll look after you... just… this stops. This stops here! These guys you get involved with are nothing but bad news!”

She nodded into his chest. Sebastian heard muffled noises coming from the bathroom. “Come on, Sis, I’ll clean this one up too…”

“I’m so messed up…”

“We both are,” Sebastian sighed. Her–ex, he supposed–boyfriend was indeed tied up in the bathtub. Sebastian studied him critically: he had an atrocious bruise at the hairline, dried blood in his hair and down his face, and was tied up like a spider had tried its hand at macramé–badly.

“What did you hit him with?”

“Candlestick.” She sighed, “Dented it, too.”

“I’d say you need to get better at tying people up, but I don’t want to have to ever deal with this again.”

She nodded, “Once he started to wake up I gagged him with a sock.”

“Yeah…” _Fuck, people knew they were going out…_ “We can’t just kill him here, hon.”

THAT got through to the asshole: he started struggling more.

“We can’t? I got him into the bathtub…” She looked up hopefully, “You said…”

“Sweetie,” Sebastian kissed her gently on top of her head. “First of all, you probably have blood in the room you fought in, and secondly people KNOW you two were going out.”

“I wasn’t expecting this!” She started sobbing again. “I thought he loved me!”

Sebastian hugged her and sighed. “It’s ok, Rose, we’ll deal with it… Let me call my new boss…”

He pulled her out of the bathroom and phoned Jim.

~

Jim was in the cab heading to the nearest safe house when his phone rang. A quick glance at the number and he answered it, “Better be good!”

“My sister… her boyfriend hit her and…” Sebastian sighed, “He’s still alive, but… people know they were going out. You said you could arrange to get rid of him?”

Jim stared at the taxi seat in front of him for a beat. “Hang on.” He told the cabbie to pull over and spoke back into the phone. “Try this again?”

“He hit her. I don’t have all the details, but she defended herself and… anyway, he’s tied up in her bathtub with what I suspect is a concussion–he probably bled on her rug before she got him in there. She’s bruised in the face, and…” he sighed, “if I get rid of the body, she’s the first suspect.”

“I have been under-informed…” Jim said quietly.

“Yeah, probably,” Sebastian admitted. “If you can make this go away–without her getting arrested…” he looked down at his sister and sighed, “whatever you want.” He said it quietly–wondering how horrible it would be…

Jim, sitting in the back of the cab scrubbed a hand across his face. This had gotten out of control, and, while it MIGHT be a good thing, he was racing the clock. He looked up and gave the cabbie a different address. “Bonus if you beat the speed record there.” He waved a sizable bill at the cabbie and then he got back on the phone.

“I was heading to a different house, but… I’ll be back where you were instead. Can you bring your new friend? As I’m sure you are aware, I have a spare room–since you aren’t using it.”

Sebastian had to admire his ability to get the facts across without telling the cabbie anything. “I can get him there.”

“I’ll probably be asleep when you get in–like I was before–so… just get him settled and hang out.”

“Yes, sir,” Sebastian nodded and put the phone away.

Rose looked up at him worriedly, “Who was that? Can you trust him?”

“My new boss, and…” He forced a smile and tapped her lightly under the chin. “Chin up, Rose… haven’t I always managed?”

“…I’m sorry, I really am.”

“My boss said he can get you a new job… so… until I find out how we’re handling this? Just call in sick, okay?” He considered. “But once I get him out of here, try to clean up any blood.”

She smiled tiredly, “That’s not hard–I do it all the time at work.”

He moved his bags into the back seat and wrestled the guy into the boot. Rose brought him out some sandwiches and he took off: it was getting light out and he wanted to get the guy moved before too many people were up and around.

Sebastian tried to make himself look at it practically: he wasn’t just asking Jim to make an embezzling charge go away, he was asking him to murder and clean up a body.

 _It wouldn’t be that bad, I mean… the guy was… well… I mean for a guy he was cute_ , Sebastian tried to convince himself, _It’s not like he could HURT me… I think._

 _He’s going to want to be on top and fuck me,_ Sebastian shuddered: whatever else he’d done, he’d never taken it up the ass. He gulped as a wave of nausea hit him at the thought.

He resolved to make the best of it. _At least he isn’t Magnussen._

It wasn’t easy getting the guy out of the boot and into the room. Sebastian spent some time cleaning up: the buckets had to be dumped, and all the empty bottles and stuff taken out. He didn’t bother untying the asshole, just hooked the cuffs around his ankle and locked them to the bottom of the bedframe.

After he locked him in, he went looking for Jim.

He found him in the bedroom–the one with windows and a door that wasn’t reinforced. He was sprawled on the bed in his underwear and out cold–which looked pretty tempting. Sebastian sighed and hit the couch.

A good while later, Sebastian got up–his stomach was growling at him and he had to pee…

He looked in on Jim on the way back from the bathroom: he hadn’t moved. Sebastian frowned. _No, REALLY hadn’t moved… like, not an inch._

He walked in hesitantly. “Sir?”

_Nothing._

He reached out and shook him gently… nothing… and… Sebastian frowned and put his hand to the man’s head: _cool._ An unsettled feeling came over him as he reached out and put his fingers on the pulse in Jim’s neck. _Nothing? Wait… there…_

Sebastian counted… _that couldn’t be right._ He counted again…

He walked out and made himself breakfast–lots of shelf stable stuff, not much fresh–and started the tea going… then he walked back in.

He tried the pulse in his wrist, and then his neck again.

He carefully rolled him onto his back, and pulled him up onto the pillows–checking carefully that he had a clear airway–and checked AGAIN…

Nothing in the wrist, an impossibly slow beat in the neck, and he was cool to the touch. He also didn’t react in any way as Sebastian hauled him around.

Sebastian went away, showered, changed, got another cup of tea, and sat down on the sofa.

_What the HELL have I gotten into?_


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> small world...

Jim’s alarm went off and he struggled to coordinate enough to turn it off. When it went silent he slipped back to sleep. He woke up again–without the dragging lethargy of pre-sunset… _I went back to sleep? Wait… motion?_ He sat up slowly and looked around the room: the lights were on and Sebastian Moran was sitting in a chair in the doorway with a cup in his hand.

“I put your coffee on the bedside table,” Sebastian said very slowly and carefully. “Also, you were room temperature–yeah, I checked–and barely had a pulse: it started speeding up just before your alarm went off and you finally woke up at sunset,” he sipped his drink, “none of which makes a lick of sense.”

Jim decided to ignore the rest of that statement for now. “How do you know I woke up at ‘sunset’?” He cautiously took the coffee–it was still hot, so he drank it.

“You told me to get back here by dawn… and then I found you. After I thought about it, I checked sunset and sunrise times and WHY the fuck does it look like you’re a vampire?! Because they don’t exist!”

Jim sat thoughtfully on the bed and finished his coffee. “Good coffee,” he commented idly. “You remembered how I like it.”

“Junior officers make a lot of tea and coffee for senior officers: I had practice.” Sebastian looked at him. “Well?”

Jim shrugged, “I woke up in the morgue: your guess is as good as mine.” He smirked faintly, “Magnussen tried to have me killed–joke’s on him, I guess.”

“Magnussen… tried to have you killed?” Sebastian asked. “And you woke up in the morgue?”

“Mmm-hmmm. He tampered with my medication. I used to do a lot of business with darling Mags; he didn’t like the fact that he couldn’t push me around, and he finally decided the risk-to-benefit ratio was not in my favor anymore.” Jim tilted his head thoughtfully, “Frankly, I didn’t think he had it in him.”

Jim put down the empty cup. “As far as it goes? Thanks to his tampering, I died… and then… well, I woke up in the morgue as I said–and no I have no idea how, or why–but I’ve been experimenting with what I can do and it’s… useful.”

“You…” Sebastian rubbed his eyes and then forced himself to take a deep breath. “Vampires aren’t real.”

“The facts are that I DIED–and I didn’t get lifesaving surgery or any of the usual things–and I woke up in a morgue drawer without a scratch on me… and then I attacked the man who opened the morgue drawer and drank his blood.” Jim shrugged, “I tested it all out once I calmed down a bit.”

“How do you TEST being a vampire?!” Sebastian stood up as he shouted and then sagged back into the chair.

Jim looked thoughtful, “Well, the first part happened by accident: I was working, the sun came up, and I fell over. I can stay up for a few minutes after and I can get up, with effort, early–but that’s it. Testing that has been aggravating: I’m losing a LOT of time every day.”

Jim waved his coffee cup at Sebastian, “Which is a very good reason why I need an assistant and bodyguard: I never needed one before.”

Sebastian thought about it. “Assuming I believe you… yeah, I can see where that would mess up your ability to get stuff done… what am I saying?” He went back to muttering, “Vampires aren’t real…” in a defensive tone.

Jim nodded and got off the bed, “I may end up moving out of the country and handling things by working from different time zones.” He pulled on his clothes. “As to the rest of it? There were some criminals–stupid, but useful until they heard I was dead, and then they got ambitious. I tested blood drinking, controlling their minds… a few other things. I’ve only BEEN a vampire for less than two weeks–I think I’m doing pretty well.”

Sebastian moved out of his way. “And you have no idea how this happened?”

“No,” Jim said very shortly. “And you have no idea how much that bothers me. However, I did talk to someone else who ran into vampires–and vampire HUNTERS–so I’m tracking down what information I can.”

He sat down in the living room and waved Sebastian at a chair. “Now… apparently Magnussen had insufficient information on you and your sister–or maybe I didn’t ask the right questions when I made him answer.” Jim folded his arms and looked pointedly at him, “Either way: talk.”

Sebastian sat down slowly. “It’s… complicated.”

“Un-complicate it.”

“My sister… she gets involved with people… and…” He scrubbed at the back of his neck. “Look, we had a REALLY lousy home life.”

“You’re a noble.”

“I’m like third in line for the Lordship, yeah–doesn’t mean my life didn’t suck.” Sebastian sighed, “I have my issues, but Rose? She… she ends up involved with guys who take advantage of her.”

“Mmmm-hmmm… and she embezzled money for this loser.”

“Right. And the one before THAT she was smuggling art, and the one before THAT she was acting as a scout while he killed people, and the–”

“Whoa! Back up there…” Jim frowned. “Scout? Killed people?”

Sebastian stared at the art on the wall for a while. “She was convinced they loved her… so… she’d do anything for them.” He muttered, “We’re kind of messed up.”

“What happened… and how do you end up with her in London working for a pharmaceutical company and embezzling…?” Jim resolved to have very sharp, pointed bloody words with Magnussen.

“Well… the assassin guy… he ended up …” Sebastian was clenching his jaw and the muscles in his hand bunched up; Jim watched him cautiously. “He ended up trafficking her to his buddies… and using her as a whore to get close to targets. She called me for help when she could and I killed him–and some of his friends…”

“Definitely under-informed,” Jim sighed. _PAINFUL words with Magnussen._

“She killed the art smuggler when she found out he was married and just using her. Luckily she’d dyed her hair brown and no one knew she was English…”

Jim held up a hand. “But this time it’s her real name and people saw them together?”

“Right.” Sebastian looked down. “She’s… damaged… but she’s my sister, and it’s not like I don’t have issues…”

“Tiger, you have collected works!” Jim snorted. “Has she called in? Did anyone see the bruises?”

“I had her call in sick and stay home.”

“Can she lie with a straight face?” Jim asked. Sebastian nodded.

“Can she act?” Jim was tapping his leg idly. “I mean can she pretend to be scared?”

“Yes.”

“Have her call the police: her boyfriend beat her, and said he’d come back and finish the job… and something about money and her work… let them take her to the hospital and have her come unglued.” Jim shrugged, “You come in and threaten to hunt him down and murder him… that shouldn’t take much acting, right?”

“Right…?”

“If you get arrested, my lawyer will bail you out. More likely, you’ll just be told to leave it to the cops. As far as you two need to act: HE used her, HE stole the money–close to the truth anyway–and he threatened her.” Jim smiled. “But before she does that, or just when she starts, we plant evidence in his house… and a bit in hers.”

Sebastian looked dubious. “Evidence of what?”

“Why, that he worked for ME. He was obviously one of the men I had keeping an eye on… oh… hmmmm… Where does this loser live and hang out?

Sebastian told him what he knew.

“I’ll have to check, but it might be best if he was targeting DI Lestrade.”

“Say WHAT?”

“I had snipers and so on on Sherlock Holmes’ friends–it’s why he jumped.”

Sebastian suddenly saw it. “And you’re going to plant evidence that he was one of them? Going after a COP?”

Jim smiled politely. “Yes.”

“Will it hold up?!” Sebastian was looking at him with awe: _it was pretty damn brilliant if he could pull it off._

“Oh, yes. After all, we can plant evidence that comes directly from me… and then I’ll control him and make sure he gets killed in a standoff with the police…” Jim smirked, “or maybe with MI5.”

“You… can control people?”

“Yes.”

“Why–”

“Didn’t I control you?" Jim shrugged. "You appear to be resistant–apparently some people are.”

“Uh… Is that a problem?”

“No, it’s a benefit.” Seeing Sebastian’s confused expression, he explained, “There are OTHER vampires: having a bodyguard they can’t turn against me is important.”

 _That… made sense… no, no it doesn’t: vampires are NOT real._  Sebastian went back to the topic. “Don’t people think you were just a hired actor?” Sebastian tried to find holes in the plan. “If you plant evidence that he worked for you…”

“First of all, the Secret Intelligence folks know I’m real: they had me interrogated after all–”

“Wait… in London?!” Sebastian stared at him. “We got in trouble for that in the Middle East!”

“No one can prove anything, and if I hadn’t had fail-safes and dead man switches I would have vanished forever–and who’d look? As it is… well… I got a wee bit upset and that’s why Sherly-locks is off being dead for a bit.” Jim frowned. “Once I get this whole vampire thing settled I am GOING to pay a visit to Mycroft…”

“Back to my sister…?”

“Oh, yes. Well, she will need to go into hiding–whether officially with the witness protection or unofficially as a battered woman with a crazy ex–and thus she ends up working in a small clinic and meeting the delightful Doctor Captain John Watson.”

Sebastian stared at him. “Did you say… Captain Watson? John ‘Three Continents’ Watson?”

“What’s this?”

“Short fellow? Blondish? Looks like an aggrieved librarian until you get him mad?”

“I suppose? I have a photo…”

“Lemme see that… uh… please, sir?”

Jim went into his files and brought the surveillance photos up on his laptop. “Here… that’s Sherlock, and that’s–”

“Three Continents Watson… DAYUM…” Sebastian grinned. “I know him.”

“You do? How do you… I guess you could have run into him…?”

“Heh… ‘run into him’… that’s funny.” He eventually stopped chuckling and stared at Jim. “Wait… you knew about me, but you don’t know about him?”

Jim frowned, “I know about YOU because you were rather loudly discharged over that scandal–and I was in the market for a good sniper–what am I supposed to know about him?”

Sebastian smirked and sat back. “That… insane lunatic… was our medic.”

“He was in the Fifth Northumberland–”

“–Fusiliers? Yeah, they would have disbanded in… oh, the fifties? But were kept around on paper and as a parade unit–just enough people actually in it to keep the cover story up. The black ops boys who get honorable discharges or disability discharges always get that stamped on their paperwork, unless there’s another unit that fits.”

“Watson… Watson? Mister fuzzy jumpers?” Jim waved a hand at John’s height and looked dubious.

“John Watson, crazy strong right hook, insane temper issues, good shot–I should know, I trained him–also has sister issues… yeah.”

Jim got up silently and walked away; he came back with a bottle of whiskey and two glasses. “It’s a good thing Mags killed me. I missed this? I should shoot myself again.”

Sebastian accepted the whiskey with a happy sigh. “In fairness, sir, he does LOOK pretty much like an aggrieved librarian–I did say that.”

Jim took a cautious sip, “It’s the jumpers… he looks so… plebian.”

“You want to set up my sister with Watson?”

“It was an idea. I didn’t know you two knew each other.”

“Well, he’s never met my sister–I’ve never met his, either–but it would probably be best if she introduced herself: once she ‘realizes’…” Sebastian considered. “He’s not a bad sort: temper issues, but he’s not going to lie and lead her on…”

“I just thought they would hit it off… and that way you could keep an eye on him.”

“I’m not taking a hit on him, if that’s what you want. I have some ethics!”

“I did kind of want to drown him in a swimming pool for a while,” Jim admitted. “But… how about this: you agree to take him down if he’s an ACTIVE threat to me, and otherwise we just keep an eye on him and make sure he doesn’t get in my way.”

Sebastian nodded, “That’s fair.”

“I feel sorry for him a bit,” Jim admitted grumpily into his whiskey. “Sherly apparently let him believe he really was dead–the man’s crushed–plus he’s getting all the shit thrown at him for being suspected of being an accomplice for all the stuff I framed Sherlock for.”

Jim swirled the whiskey in the glass and put it down– _it didn’t taste as good as it used to._ “I honestly expected Mycroft to shield him a bit more than that, but Watson’s been being harassed by the press and had a few people try to jump him–not my doing.”

They sat quietly for a moment as Sebastian and Jim BOTH thought about how small a world it was. Eventually Sebastian cleared his throat and said, “Let me know how long framing this asshole will take and I’ll call my sister.”

“Well, let’s go find out how amenable he is to control.”

“…Yes, sir.”

Jim smirked, “And then we’ll talk about you moving in as my new live-in bodyguard.” Jim looked him over once in an appraising fashion. “First item on the agenda is getting you better clothes.”

“What’s wrong with my clothes?”

“They’re not up to my standards,” he sniffed. “I may be the vampire, not the werewolf, of London… but my tailors are fantastic.”


	11. Chapter 11

Molly barely made it into work, and then work was insane: three people out with some sort of gut issues, and then there was a mysterious corpse…

 _Sherlock would have loved this case,_ Molly thought with a sigh as she wrote down the test results.

She made her way home slowly. _Sherlock really DID just use me… Jim was right…_

 _I’m losing my mind._ She let herself into her apartment and petted Toby. _I can’t go to a regular therapist though, because of Sherlock… and how would I explain any of it anyway? Maybe Mycroft knows someone?_

Her nose wrinkled at the smells: _litter box needs work, take out garbage needs out, and… um… right, I need to change my sheets._

She was changing the sheets–Toby tried to help by sitting in the way–when her eye caught on a bottle of hand lotion…

 _Oh yes, imaginary Jim used that… on my back… wait._ Molly slowly picked up the bottle and stared at it. _This was in my guest basket in the bathroom…_

“I don’t remember getting this?” Molly looked at Toby who miau-ed at her.

“I… got this from the bathroom? And… rubbed it… into my back? That was… but that was my imagination?” Molly frowned. “That’s gone way beyond imagination and guilt and into psychosis.”

As she put the bottle down, she caught a flash of blue in the waste basket: she pulled out a pair of Nyplex gloves. Molly carefully unrolled them and stared…

“I don’t have blue ones at home,” she said quietly to Toby.

After a while she got up and went out to the living room. _I’ve been hallucinating? Dreaming? Imagining Jim… but I didn’t eat two servings of the food–I normally put half of it away in the fridge…_

She paced slowly around the room.

_I don’t have those gloves here, and I can’t have rubbed lotion into my own back…_

She walked slowly over to the closet and got out the nanny-cam she’d purchased when she had first found out about Jim–not that anyone bothered to tell her, or warn her, or be concerned… She set it up to cover the living room and turned it on.

~

Luckily the idiot ex-boyfriend turned out to be very easily controlled–especially once Jim took a bite out of him. Sebastian had just stared at that for a long time, and then looked at the pinkish spot on his wrist…

“You BIT me?”

“You put your wrist in my mouth, Tiger, what did you expect me to do?”

“I don’t remember you biting me?!”

“That reminds me…” Jim tossed him a bottle. “Vitamins plus iron–and drink more liquids.”

Sebastian caught it by reflex and then protested, “I am NOT a buffet!”

Jim looked up from assembling some nice evidence of his involvement with the idiot–surveillance photos of Lestrade, a few of Sherlock–“You most certainly are! If I want to have you for dinner that’s my call: you said ‘anything’, if I must remind you.”

Sebastian winced. “Alright,” he muttered, “but… I want to remember it… I don’t like not knowing…”

Jim sighed, “Sure thing, as soon as I figure out how it works. Do I need to remind you I’m figuring this out as I go?”

“Oh… Right…”

Eventually Jim handed instructions and a stack of paperwork to the idiot to take home. Once he’d been sent on his way, Jim handed a few small items to Sebastian. “Take that to your sister, brief her on the details, and make sure she understands the rules.”

“Yes, sir,” he sighed. “Then what?”

“She called you–you are insisting on calling the cops. Play it that way.” He frowned. “And remind her to stay on script.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I expect that will keep you busy through tomorrow. Just text me after sunset to keep me informed.”

Sebastian nodded. “Meet you back here?”

“If I don’t give you any other orders… yes; however, I may give you a different address.”

Once Sebastian had left, Jim considered: _Magnussen was a priority._

~

Charles Augustus Magnussen prided himself on being the man pulling the strings: able to get to anyone and unable to be gotten to. Right now, he was cancelling appointments “for his health” and planning to flee to Denmark.

_Moriarty had been useful… but he’d always been dangerous. The plan should have worked–even Mycroft Holmes had indicated he was dead! Somehow, somehow he was alive… and…_

_He must have drugged me–payback for my tampering with his pills? Because I’d babbled rather alarmingly._ He’d also been ill since–weak and tired and a bit nauseous: drug side effects no doubt.

He could still pull strings form Denmark, if not as well, and he would come back once he’d arranged the assassination of Moriarty for good.

“Going somewhere, Mags?”

Magnussen turned slowly to find Moriarty standing in his bedroom door. “How the HELL did you get in here?”

“I’m dead, remember? You killed me?” Jim smiled cheerfully. “So I’m haunting you…”

“Our business is QUITE concluded, James…”

“James? Oh no, Charles–it’s just STARTED…” Jim startled when Magnussen pulled a small gun from his suitcase. “Goodness! Planning on getting your hands dirty for once?”

“As you said, you’re dead.” Magnussen smiled tightly.

Jim pushed, “Put it down, carefully.”

Magnussen put it down and then his eyes widened. “How….?”

“Ooooohhh, Magsie? Did you expect me to just let you kill me?” Jim smirked. “Again?”

Magnussen tried to run and Jim grabbed him. “Not so fast and,” he pushed, “don’t yell.”

As much as Jim enjoyed watching Magnussen struggle and hyperventilate, he moved him over to sit down next to his suitcase. “Planning on skipping out on me?”

“…family emergency…”

“Mmmm… sure. Mags.” Jim pushed him down on the bed and crawled on top of him.

Charles was panicking. He didn’t understand, and Moriarty was dangerous under the best of conditions… why had he put down the gun? What… “I… I can get you Mycroft Holmes!” he blurted. _He’d been interested in Sherlock, curse him, maybe Mycroft?_

Jim laughed, “Oh… YOU can get to the Iceman? Pull the other one Mags, it has bells. Your only leash on Mycroft was Sherlock.”

“And you destroyed him!” Magnussen snarled. “I almost OWNED him, and that would have given me Mycroft Holmes! Why the hell did you have to interfere?!”

Jim smiled and stroked down Magnussen’s neck. “Sherlock was my toy first, Charles: if you wanted to play with my toy, you should have asked me.”

“Get OFF me!”

“Lol, no.” Jim grabbed Charles by the hair and stretched his neck. “I can do anything I want to you, and you just have to shut up and take it: must be awful to be on the other end of the leash…” Jim bit him and drank slowly, drawing it out.

He gave Magnussen his instructions–as pale and ill as he looked, no one would question his traveling back to Denmark to stay with family…

He went over all the information he had on the Moran family–it turned out he didn’t have much more than Jim had gotten the first time–then he started asking about Sherlock’s circle of friends: Magnusson started with Mycroft, of course.

Jim listened carefully: most of the information he already knew, but there were a few tidbits… “Really Mags? Can you prove that?”

“No…” he admitted unhappily, “not yet. That’s why I needed Sherlock.”

“Mmmm… and how did you plan on using Sherlock as leverage?”

“Initially? Drugs. I’d gotten hold of some of his suppliers… I was getting footage, evidence…”

Jim felt a wave of fury. _Those drugs dulled Sherlock’s MIND! They made him useless!_ “You got him drugs, Charles?” Jim asked gently, oh so very gently…

“Yes. But before I could get more than just photos of him in flop houses, his brother got him cleaned up again; he would have been back using except…” Magnussen glared at him.

“Except for me…”

“You and Watson,” Magnussen almost spat at him.

“You are going to go to Denmark, Charles,” Jim pushed, “and then you are going to call me and tell me where you are. You are going to tell all of your servants and guards that I am to be let in anytime, with anyone I bring with me.”

“…N-No, I don’t…”

“Awwww… Do I need to try an experiment? I wasn’t going to, you know… but you gave Sherlock DRUGS!” Jim started shrieking. “You dulled his MIND!”

For the first time Jim forced himself to bite his own wrist–it hurt–and he pushed it to Magnusson’s mouth. “DRINK IT!”

After a short while Jim started to marvel. _Magnussen… Magnusson wasn’t gagging? He looked rapt…_

Jim took his wrist away and licked it clean–his own blood tasted odd–and closed it. Magnussen was staring at him in fascination.

“What are you going to do Mags?” Jim glared at him.

“Go to Denmark, and be prepared for you to come visit me…” His pupils were huge and he looked… he looked drugged.

_Shit, I need to experiment with this a LOT more…_

“That’s right.” Jim considered and let him up off the bed. He frowned and walked backwards across the room. “Crawl to me,” Jim said without pushing in the slightest.

Without hesitation, Charles got down on his hands and knees and crawled to him. His cheeks were flushed and his eyes were huge–against the pallor of his face, it was eerie.

“If you were anyone else, Mags, I’d feel sorry for you…” Jim looked down at him, “but you’re you, so I don’t. If I wanted to make a quick buck, I’d let all your little assets have a shot at you…”

Jim smirked, “But I might just be immortal now: I have to think in the long term…”


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> so... what has everyone been up to this week?  
> (Molly is a lot of things, but she isn't stupid)

Sebastian didn’t get back from dealing with his sister for almost four days. He managed some quick texts to Jim, of course, but that was all: after all, his sister was being ‘stalked’ by her abusive ex…

The police had gotten VERY interested when she tearfully turned over some of his belongings, including the card with Inspector Lestrade’s home address on it. Sebastian had stuck with Rose–partly to give himself an alibi, partly to give her one–until after the police finally raided the ex’s flat–he’d escaped just ahead of them. Then, of course, Sebastian had had to stay with her because they’d found all those lovely planted items in his flat… including the illegal guns.

Sebastian caught sight of Lestrade–he wasn’t permitted to be directly involved, of course, since he was a target–talking to a tall man in almost ridiculously formal clothes. Sebastian made note for later but kept his head down and mostly played the protective and worried brother. It would have looked odd if he DIDN’T stay with her, after all, and they had a cop stationed outside for a couple of days until they could arrange to move her to protective custody somewhere.

The limited contact he had from his boss indicated it was all going well…

Sebastian smiled when he saw a news report that Magnussen had taken a trip overseas to deal with his health, and some family business. _Good riddance._

~

Jim was in his element, really. _Unraveling other people’s plots, making people believe what you wanted, and orchestrating blame? Practically old times…_

The soon-to-be very dead ex-boyfriend was on the run, and as a side benefit had taken the heat off of one of Jim’s ACTUAL assassins–who quietly slipped away to be useful later. Sebastian sent a picture of Mycroft Holmes talking to Lestrade; judging from the quiet involvement of MI5 in the manhunt, everyone believed the planted evidence. _They should: I’m very good at it when I bother._

He checked up on Molly once, after she’d gone to sleep, and tried to catch up with her again, but she’d taken an overnight shift to fill in. _Still… she did seem to be eating more regularly, and Toby never minded the company._

Magnussen got to Denmark. Jim’s agent in Mycroft’s office–unfortunately a very low level peon–reported that it was causing equal parts relief and consternation to have Mags suddenly up and leave the country. _It must be driving Mycroft crazy not knowing what’s going on; of course, he’s so busy dealing with his brother’s death and finding one of my assassins, that he can’t really put his full thoughts on it._

Jim mostly fed in small amounts at the college coffee shops where he could blend in, but he found himself becoming a bit choosy. Most of the college students had poor diets: half of them had blood that tasted watery and thin. The nightclub crowd was mixed, with some having fairly tasty blood and some not, but after one rather disastrous evening he avoided anyone who smelled of drugs at all: while it was interesting to be seeing quite so many colors, he lost several hours of work, and with his work hours curtailed by sunlight he couldn’t risk it.

_Although it might be interesting to experiment when I wasn’t QUITE so busy… Sigh. Another thing on my growing ‘to do’ list._

He was simply going to have to surround himself with healthy people who ate well–enough of them to avoid wasting time hunting. The problem of course, is that doing so in London would concentrate his employees and risk bringing big brother’s attention to himself… but since he’d already decided he would have to get out of London–England, really–for a while, it wouldn’t matter.

So he would just have to tidy up his business in town, and then he could go catch up with that ‘vampire hunter’ Anderson had told him about who was conveniently locked up in Europe.

~

Molly could hardly believe it when she finally remembered to check her nanny cam. She almost hadn’t, since she hadn’t seen her imaginary Jim at all, but…

There… on the video… was Jim Moriarty letting himself in, and walking straight back to her bedroom; he walked out shortly afterwards.

A couple of days later, he let himself in and… fed Toby? He sat on her sofa with Toby, watching a vampire movie for an hour or two, and then left. Molly checked the time and date stamp: that was when she had taken the night shift… she’d gotten home near dawn.

She wasn’t imagining him… he was REAL!

Molly looked at the video again, watched Jim walk casually out of camera range to her bedroom and back out…

She transferred the recordings to a backup and paced.

 _Do I call someone?_ She almost laughed at the idea of calling the police. “Excuse me, but my dead psychopathic terrorist ex-boyfriend? The one that almost stole the crown jewels? Yes? Well he’s alive, and…”

_Wait._

_He… couldn’t be alive._ She’d SEEN his body before Mycroft’s people took him away–not that they’d given her any time to grieve. She supposed they didn’t consider that she had feelings at all, given how they just left her to deal with the aftermath.

_But he was dead–very dead._

_So how could he be… walking around? Twins?_ She could almost hear Sherlock’s snorted, “It’s never twins.”

_Maybe it was twins? Or someone who’d had plastic surgery? Was the dead man not Jim? Was the live one in her bedroom not…_

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!” Molly shrieked, setting Toby to scatter and hide under the sofa. _Oh my GOD he was real? Then he… and I… and…_. She stared at the sofa and back toward her bedroom.

“Think, Molly! Calm down and THINK!” Molly told herself firmly. “Alright… someone–who looks exactly like Jim–has been letting himself into my apartment and… feeding Toby… wait…” she looked dubiously at Toby who had crawled out from under the furniture. “You don’t like strangers… and… and this Jim knew where your food was?”

Toby “miau-ed” at her, or more likely at the word “food”.

“So either he’s been coming in and out enough to know where the food is… and I just didn’t know it because there were no cameras…” she paced slowly back and forth, “or he knew because I’d showed him back when he was ‘Jim from IT’ and volunteered to look after Toby if I needed him to.”

She went into the kitchen and made tea. While it was boiling, she tried to be reasonable. After she sat down with the tea–and fed Toby–she decided that reasonable wasn’t working.

“When you can’t figure it out, go over what you know,” Molly muttered, remembering one of her favorite professors, “and see if you missed anything.”

She got out her diary and started making a list. She jotted down everything she could think of that Jim had said or done–and she was going to have to burn this diary before anyone else ever saw it.

She eventually had to go to bed–she hid the diary first–although she had trouble sleeping, because she kept expecting Jim to just show up. She called out sick the next morning: no one was surprised, since that stomach bug had been going around.

She went over the facts again, and again… and again.

The sticking point–the thing that kept making this not work any other way–was the fact that he had apparently just convinced her that he was imaginary. Even when he’d TOUCHED her, and she’d doubted… something had happened and she just… believed him: he was imaginary.

_So… somehow Jim had… hypnotized her? Drugged her? Something…_

She knew she should call Mycroft–he’d left a phone number in case of emergency–but… but they hadn’t cared one bit about her. They didn’t care how terribly John was doing, or how hurt she was…

They hadn’t bothered to even tell her that her Jim, the Jim she was trying to go out with, was a killer! She’d had to find out when the police and MI5 started ripping apart the hospital and asking her questions.

No… she was going to handle this herself.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> GIGO... it's hard to come up with the right answers when you have the wrong data.

Mycroft Holmes tried not to let it show, but he was concerned. Gregory Lestrade had been targeted, of course, as one of the three people targeted by Moriarty to use as leverage against his brother…

But…

While the sniper on Mrs. Hudson had been found and neutralized almost immediately, and the sniper on John Watson had escaped and left the country, the sniper on Lestrade appeared to have stayed active. It didn’t fit the profile–HE didn’t fit the profile.

Oh, there was no question the man was a criminal–evidence of his manipulating the rather credulous and emotionally gullible young lady was easy to find in addition to the evidence regarding Lestrade–but he seemed a peculiar choice for one of Moriarty’s cold killers.

It left only one conclusion: there were multiple people targeting–or potentially targeting–his brother and his friends.

This man had clearly been the backup option–the follow-up killer in the event that Mycroft and his men managed to find and remove the primary killer–which implied there were such back up options on the other targets as well… some unknown number of people primed to murder people close to Sherlock.

This fellow appeared to have pursued the idea even after Sherlock’s public demise–possibly simply out of a hatred of the police.

Come to that, it was probably why Moriarty recruited the man–why pay top dollar when you can get someone with a personal grudge?

It took Mycroft several days to get around to more thoroughly investigating one Rosemond Mary Moran. Her file proved to be unsettling–and fascinating. She was a trained nurse, having worked variously in charitable causes overseas, and in pharmaceutical research… and in every case a change in her employment and location matched her apparent involvement with a manipulative criminal.

This time she had called her brother, who had in turn convinced her to call the police. Her brother was…

…a quick glance at the documentation and Mycroft was on the phone with a blistering tirade against the incompetence of the personnel doing the research.

The file only listed her brother as “former military”. Mycroft called the people responsible for this report fools back to the third generation. Her brother was John Sebastian Moran, related to Lord Moran, yes, but of FAR more importance was the fact that he was the recently disgraced Colonel who had taken almost the entirety of the blame for illegal actions in the war zone–actions he was involved in, certainly, but which were actually undertaken by multiple agencies.

Mycroft delayed talking to Ms. Moran while he ran a PROPER background check on her brother.

…

His background check was… interesting. Sebastian Moran was almost the perfect SAS sniper–until you got to his psychological profile. They’d clearly missed a great deal in his early service, but as was often the case after years of pressure the details became more evident. He had utterly no regard for human life, unless they were people he knew personally, and had killed without remorse or apparent trauma–including bare handed and up close with a knife. _Valuable, but dangerous._

He was homophobic and somewhat violent toward gay men–although he had no such tendencies towards lesbians, Mycroft noted–but had been reported to have homosexual relations with men in the service. _Ah, closeted and self-hating: likely a homophobic and abusive upbringing._ Mycroft made a note to investigate their early family life.

He was evaluated as being almost pathologically loyal, willing to risk his life to rescue the men under his command, and also willing to follow the most blatantly illegal orders if they came from a trusted commander–which had been part of the problem leading to his discharge.

Mycroft suggested quietly to his associates that Colonel Moran be investigated with an eye to recruiting him for non-military black operations.

He was clearly very protective and close to his sister and she had no hesitation about turning to him for help–but had hesitated about admitting that she had fallen in with a problematic lover, again. It appeared that her brother’s leave times often lined up with the death of her lovers as well. Hmmm… yes, that made sense: she knew that the slightest hint of maltreatment would result in her brother’s loyalty to her turning him violent against them, so she delayed telling him until she could no longer fool herself.

Given her past track record–even hinted at in this report–she was likely extremely easy to manipulate: one of those people who allowed emotions to lead them astray. Rather like her brother, then: intensely loyal–if lacking in discernment. Her brother at least seemed to place his loyalty with a bit more care.

He arranged to observe her debrief once she had been separated from her brother and moved to witness protection. As he had suspected, she was deeply depressed and distraught at finding out that he “didn’t love her” after all. She did indeed have that same strain of obsessive loyalty as was noted in her brother’s file–as well as an extremely fantasy prone mind: she likely lied to herself, and thus to others, extensively.

Mycroft made a note to find out if Colonel Moran was also prone to fantasy and deception–it seemed unlikely.

Yes, she had embezzled money for her lover–he had assured her he would pay it back. No, she never imagined that he would be violent toward her. No, she only went to her brother as a last resort, trying to get the money back when it became obvious that he couldn’t repay it in time. Sebastian had been right; he was just using me… She spent several minutes protesting about how much she thought he had loved her, and how betrayed she was… followed by sniffling into the interrogators shirt.

Mycroft shuddered. She was bright enough, and a competent nurse by all reports–but her emotional liability was disagreeable. Mycroft left to go back to dealing with the Korean issues.

~

Jim woke up groggily with his alarm and smelled… coffee?

“Better be you, Moran…” Jim mumbled, then reconsidered. “Okay, anyone considerate enough to wait with my coffee is probably okay…” He cracked an eye open to see Sebastian sitting by the door looking thoughtfully at him.

“Your coffee is on the bedside table,” Sebastian said, “and you REALLY need a body guard.”

“I believe I said that.” Jim managed to grab the coffee mug on the second try.

“You do realize it’s CREEPY coming in and finding you cold–cool, at least–and unresponsive?”

“You’ve mentioned.” Jim raised an eyebrow at him. “How’s your sister?”

“Fine. Some of the security people think she’s an idiot–which is fair, because she kind of is about guys–but they all understand that I’ll gut them if they hurt her.”

“Good.” Jim sipped his coffee until he felt marginally awake. “Magnussen is in Denmark, so that’s where we’re going.”

Sebastian stared at him. “We are?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“…Can I kill him?”

“Maybe eventually.” Jim shrugged. “For right now, I’m using his properties and ‘assets’ for my own purposes. It’s easier to lie low that way: if anyone saw too much activity in my usual networks they might ask questions.”

Sebastian reluctantly agreed that was fair. “Can I kill him when you’re done with him? The man was sliming me… and threatening Rose.”

“He’s slimy, Sebie: he slimes everyone,” Jim shrugged again. “It’s likely that I’ll have to set up his death to blame one of his blackmail subjects, but I’ll make sure you get a few shots in–more than a few if you can keep from killing him.”

Sebastian perked up notably, “I’m not bad at it! Not as good as Watson, but–”

“Wait, what?”

“Watson? The guy you want to set up my sister with?”

“Johnny boy, yes?”

Sebastian shrugged. “Medical people… they know exactly where to hurt you so you don’t die; if you ever get in a fight with one, kill them quick.” He looked off thoughtfully. “Mind you, he had such a temper that he’d usually just kill someone, but…”

“The more you talk about him, the harder it is for me to keep up the agreement to leave him alone, so maybe you should drop it, okay?” Jim said through a gritted teeth smile.

“…Right.” Sebastian slunk off.

Jim came out to find him after a bit–he’d made more coffee. “So… I need to go catch up to Anderson and Molly, and then–”

“Uh… who?”

“Anderson is Phillip Anderson: he’s a forensic technician and Mags had him on the hook against–”

“The guy works under Lestrade?”

“Don’t interrupt me,” Jim said firmly, “and yes.”

“Uh… he had some kind of a mental breakdown and was on leave–according to the gossip I picked up from the cops.”

“What?!”

“Apparently babbling that Holmes was innocent, and he was going to prove it… had some kind of public breakdown in the office and got sectioned… they figure he’ll be retired on a disability or something…”

Jim drew a hand down his face. “Great, just great….”

“Not what you wanted?”

“No.” Jim sighed, “No. I kind of felt sorry for him, actually. Shit.”

“Errr… so what have you done to this Molly person? And who is she?”

“Forensics at St. Barts… I… I used her to get close to Sherlock. Sherlock used her to get access to the lab and things–she was infatuated with him.”

“Is… is she going to have a breakdown like that? Am I?”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Sebastian… YOU are not going to have anything, other than the existing neurosis you came with–minus the gay bashing because I won’t put up with it. Anderson had a breakdown because he was already traumatized by his prior dealings with vampires… and guilt over helping me frame Sherlock.”

“…So… Molly is…?”

“I better go check on her. I… I had her convinced I was a hallucination… or something.”

“Jesus!” Sebastian stared at him. “THAT can’t be healthy!”

Jim pursed his lips and frowned, “No… I was mostly telling her to eat better and stand up for herself… but…” He sighed, “Yeah, I better check on her.”

Jim got himself together to go out. “Make sure you have all your things settled–depending on how things go, we may leave for Denmark tomorrow!”


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Molly part 1... in which Molly haz fierce!

Molly had been prepared for Jim–or whoever he was–to show up… and the longer he DIDN’T show up, the more anxious she got.

 _What am I going to do if he does show up?_ She went through several plans, even entertaining some frankly impossible ones, before deciding she needed to get a gun. She didn’t HAVE a gun and the only way she knew to get one legally–or mostly legally–was to ask Mycroft, but if she asked Mycroft she would have to explain…

They didn’t even bother to get her a gun when he was known to be alive and out and ….

_Right, no._

She finally stole one from the hospital evidence lock-up. There had been a gun in there for a couple of days from one of the corpses: he’d died of perfectly natural causes, so no one knew why he had a gun, but other than him not having a permit it hadn’t been used in any crime so it was low priority. Molly had been so scared getting it home.

She’d tried leaving it in her entryway table, but she was afraid it would go off. I mean, she knew guns didn’t just ‘go off’ but she didn’t know how much bumping they could take. She moved it to the kitchen and almost gave herself a heart attack when she went to get a knife and almost grabbed it by mistake. Eventually she put it in her bedside table, and fretted.

~

Jim was debating what to do as he got to Molly’s. He still wanted to hurt her, but he also wanted her to grow a spine and stand up for herself. In fairness the Holmes boys were overwhelming, and she was hung up on Sherlock… which she shouldn’t be because frankly he treated her terribly.

_He was pretty though–curly hair and bright eyes and that sexy, sexy brain._

_Well, she had taste, but seriously? People kept letting Sherlock get away with everything: that was most of the problem. I should have kidnapped him as a kid… gotten him away from his brother…_ Jim sighed as he let himself in. _It’s not like I could have taken care of him, though, I could barely take care of myself…_

He looked up to see Molly aiming a gun at him.

~

Jim stared at her for a beat, then said, “Molly, do you even know how to use a gun?”

“You-you explain yourself or… or I’ll figure it out!” That came out less threatening than she intended.

Jim couldn’t help himself: he burst out laughing.

 _This was absolutely not how this was supposed to go._ “Why are you laughing at me?”

“You remind me of that meme with a tiny fluffy kitten going ‘I haz fierce!’” Jim laughed.

“I do!... Wait… I mean… ooooooh! Stop it!” Molly felt like she was about to cry: he wasn’t even slightly afraid, and now he was leaning over the sofa laughing.

“H-hang on…” Jim gasped. “I’ll try to cower when I stop… Oh God, you are SO FUNNY!”

“Stop it!” she demanded.

Jim was laughing so hard he couldn’t speak for a moment. “Oh… Oh, you stomped your little foot… Oh that’s rich…” He slid to the floor holding his ribs.

Molly felt utterly ridiculous and realized she had started to cry. She eventually sat down on the floor and started sobbing. After a while, someone took the gun out of her hand and then she had someone putting their arms around her. She sobbed into his shoulder.

“Everyone hates me…. they just use me… I end up doing their homework and they use my lab…”

“Awww… Not everyone Mols–I like you! I haven’t stabbed you or blown you up or anything, have I?” Jim said as he petted her hair.

“You were supposed to be scared.” She sniffled.

“Honey….” Jim sighed, “Honey, I had SHERLOCK point a gun at me… and I’m pretty sure he knows how to fire one. I was more impressed that you tried, though…”

“You were?” Molly hated how hopeful she sounded.

“Yeah… you really need to grow a spine, Molly, so I was glad to see you try… although with your hands shaking like that and the safety on I wasn’t in any danger.”

“Safety?”

Jim started giggling into her hair, “Yeah, it’s a little switch that means it won’t fire accidentally. Is it even loaded?”

“I… I didn’t check,” Molly admitted. “I stole it from the morgue.”

“That’s a good girl, Mols!” Jim kissed her gently on the head. “I’ll buy you one of your own and get you time on the range. If you’re going to handle a firearm you need to know how to use it–otherwise you’re mostly a danger to yourself… or Toby.”

“Toby?! Oh my God, I could have hit Toby?!”

“Shhhh… it’s okay, he hid under the sofa like a sensible kitty.” Jim reached down to Toby–who by now had come out and was being concerned at them–and pushed him into her arms. “Come on, up onto the sofa…”

Jim honestly felt proud of her: she’d stolen a gun and threatened someone–okay, badly, but it was a start!

“I’m proud of you Molly! You actually tried to threaten me!” Jim said petting her hair back and pulling her into him on the sofa.

Molly mostly sniffled and hugged Toby. “You were supposed to be scared…”

“Yeah… well… not much scares me, but you tried! That’s great!”

“You… you broke into my flat.”

“Well… technically? I had a key made–I got tired of picking the locks. Incidentally, your locks are terrible.”

“Oh.” Molly sighed, “Why did I think I imagined you? Why are you here? You’re REAL!”

“Molly? Look at me, come on.” He tipped her head up to face him. “You don’t have to think I’m imaginary anymore.” He pushed just a little–after all, she obviously knew better already.

She blinked and then blinked again. “What… what happened?”

“But I’d hate to have to kill you, Mols, so don’t talk about me… I’m kind of fond of you, even if I want to hurt you sometimes.”

“Everyone does,” Molly said sadly, petting Toby.

“You have this ‘kick me’ sign on you, hon… it’s because you’re such a doormat that people just want to walk on you! You attract bullies: now, some people will be bullies no matter what you do, but if you stood up for yourself fewer of them would try it…”

“Like Sherlock…”

“Sherlock is a self-absorbed ass… but you do let him get away with too much. Is it the hair or the eyes?”

“He’s so smart…” Molly sighed.

“SEE! I knew you had taste!”

“Horrible taste…” Molly sniffled. “I liked you, too.”

Jim quirked his lips. “Well… I never treated you as badly as he did.”

“They didn’t even TELL me!”

“…What?”

“They didn’t even TELL ME. I found out about you when the police and… whoever… started ripping apart the hospital looking for clues.”

Jim pushed her back and sat up. “What? Seriously?!”

“I had to ask Sherlock the next time I saw him… and he just said ‘oh, he was just using you to get to me’.”

Jim tracked over to the door. “You changed the door locks…”

“I did that on my own.”

“Sherlock didn’t… Mycroft didn’t even send anyone over to change the door locks?!” _No of course not: they would have been better._

“No.”

Jim moved biting Mycroft up higher on his list and decided that Sherlock wasn’t worth his time. “That was… I’m sorry Mols, I assumed they would take care of you.”

“Mycroft made sure I wouldn’t get fired after… after Sherlock… and I could take extra vacation… but… where would I go?”

“Ever wanted to go to Denmark?”

“What? No… why?”

“Just asking…” He sighed, “Okay, Mols: you need to take that vacation, and you can come to someplace I’m staying so you’ll be safe. Maybe after I get settled somewhere?”

“Denmark?”

“No, hon, I was just going to be handling some business there. Maybe Italy or New York… I’ll call you once I figure it out–unless you want to go to Denmark, in which case you can come on my business trip… I’m taking a big good looking bodyguard, too.”

Molly frowned and her forehead wrinkled up adorably. “You’re trying to set me up with your bodyguard?”

“Well, he prefers girls… you like guys… I’m mostly gay if anything… although honestly I don’t normally care.” He shrugged, “You obviously haven’t had a decent boyfriend though.”

Molly flushed, “Oh God, that… you… oh God, that HAPPENED…” She buried her face in her hands.

Jim rolled his eyes. “Yeah… and clearly no one worth having sex with in your background…” Jim sighed and waited until she got her dignity pasted back together. “So… how did you realize you weren’t imagining things?”

“You left the lotion half empty in my bedroom and you left medical gloves–I don’t have that brand at home.”

Jim grinned, “Damn… leaving evidence behind? I really am slipping.”

“And then I set up the nanny cam.”

Jim hesitated. “You what?”

“I bought a nanny cam, back… when I found out about you and no one else cared–I still had it.”

“And?”

She nodded at a clock in the living room that had been there for a few days at least. “You came in once when I was asleep, and once when I was working overnight… and you fed Toby and…”

 _Oh dear God, I’m losing it…_ “You didn’t show anyone that, did you?!”

“No,” Molly sighed. “The only one I could think to tell was Mycroft and… and he didn’t care about me.”

Jim silently thanked whatever the patron saint of Vampires and Criminal consultants was–come to that, he better find out which saint, fae, or devil that was because he still owed them for Sebastian. “Do I need to tell you that would be a bad idea?”

“No…” she sighed again, “Are you… how did you make me think I imagined you? Why did it seem so much easier to… I don’t understand?” She looked at him. “Was… was it a twin? On the roof?”

“No, it was me.”

“But I saw him… you… them… you… you had your BRAINS leaking out!”

“Apparently they had been for some time,” Jim muttered, and then in his usual voice, “I woke up in the morgue…I’m still figuring it all out, but apparently vampires are real and I am one.”

Her eyes widened, “THAT’S why you wanted me to watch vampire movies?!”

“Yeah? I hate watching movies alone–besides, I was hoping to get some information.”

“How did you get turned into a vampire?!”

“I… I honestly don’t know, Molly.”

Molly saw the unhappy and tense look on his face and hugged him–he stiffened briefly and then relaxed into it. “You… didn’t hurt me, you could have,” she said finally.

“I could have hurt you before I was a vampire, Molly, but no: I bit you, but I only took a little. It helps me to… hypnotize you?”

“You… made me eat… you…” Molly mused thoughtfully, “Because you took blood?”

“That, and you looked tired and you weren’t eating.” Jim sighed. “You know I really should have had you targeted too, but… I always felt sorry for you the way Sherlock treated you.” He muttered, “Besides, who’d take care of Toby?”

“Thanks…” Molly sighed. “So… um… now what?”

“You erase those tapes–you might want to keep the camera around just in case–I’m going to get you the name of a reputable security company to upgrade your apartment security… No… I think I’ll buy the building, and then I can upgrade all of it.”

“You can buy the whole building?!” Molly squeaked.

Jim just nodded, “And once I get settled someplace that’s good for a vacation, I’ll have you come out.”

Molly fidgeted, remembering just how good he’d made her feel–Jim apparently could read her mind because he grinned.

“So…” Jim said, still smirking at her and running a hand down her back, “You just keep doing research on vampires… and I’ll send you some books on how not to be a doormat… and I’ll show you what a REALLY good time feels like once you catch up with me. Okay?”

“Ummm…” Molly ducked her head, “I… I still don’t want you to hurt Sherlock…”

“Meh, I was upset with him so I trashed his rep and now he’s off with Mycroft making him do all of MI6’s dirty work for him: I figure its over–besides, I was kind of unhealthily hung up on that sexy brain myself…”

Molly smiled faintly, “And the curls and the eyes?”

“Yeah.”

“He has a nice ass, too,” Molly muttered.

“True.” Jim smirked. He leaned over and kissed her gently. “Take care Mols, I’ll call you soon.”

Molly watched him go, and as he got to the door she blurted out, “You have a nice ass too!”

Jim laughed, “Damn straight I do!” and left.

She petted Toby for a while until the adrenaline settled down. “Why do I always get involved with the worst men, Toby?”

“Miau.”


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Toby is a VERY sensible cat, you know. Also Molly should stop just opening doors.

Jim went on his way, avoiding the cameras he didn’t have controlled almost on auto-pilot. _Molly took that almost impossibly well… Well, she was always an odd girl; maybe working in the morgue habituated you to…_

_Morgue?_

Jim turned around and went back to Molly’s; he knocked this time.

Molly opened the door without looking. “Eep!” She blinked at him in a startled fashion. “Jim? What?”

Jim walked in and shook his head, “Molly… at LEAST look through the peephole before opening a door? Especially if you aren’t expecting anyone!”

“Sorry…”

Jim snorted, “I only knocked because I didn’t want to risk you hurting yourself with that gun before you returned it.”

“Oh, uh…? Thank you?” She fidgeted. “You… you haven’t decided to kill me after all? Have you?”

Jim rubbed his face, “What DO people use for brains… No, I haven’t, I just realized I hadn’t told you a few things, and hadn’t asked you a few questions.”

“Oh.” Molly gestured to the sofa. “Um… Can I… Oh, do you eat? Wait… I saw you eat?”

“Tea would be lovely.” Jim sighed as he sat down and petted Toby.

Molly went off into the kitchen and Jim shook his head. “Toby, she’s a bright girl, but some days I think she may need a keeper…”

“Miau.”

“Yes, I expect it’s very difficult without thumbs,” he sighed.

“What?” Molly asked as she came in with tea.

“I was talking to Toby.”

She stared at Jim and then at Toby, “Can–can you talk to animals now? Like… well, the movies?”

Jim felt the beginnings of a headache and pinched the bridge of his nose. “No, I talk to cats because I’ve ALWAYS talked to cats. Cats usually make more sense than people. Some dogs too… depends on the dog.”

“Oh.” She sounded disappointed. “I was hoping you… you know, could actually…”

“Toby,” he said tiredly, “maybe having her watch movies was a mistake? I just didn’t know where else to get information until I talked to Anderson.”

Toby purred and leaned into the scritches.

Watching him with Toby she finally asked, “Why don’t you have a pet?”

“Lifestyle… It wouldn’t be fair. Too much chance of having to pack up and leave suddenly, too much risk of the poor creature getting shot or abandoned.” Jim shuddered. “God knows what my enemies would do to any pet of mine.”

“Oh…” Molly hesitantly reached out and hugged him. “That must be awful.”

Jim sighed as he remembered what happened to anything he cared about that couldn’t fight back. “Yeah… Well… It wouldn’t be safe for you if anyone found out, either.”

“Me?”

“Molly… I think we’ve already proven that you–” Jim bit back several comments, “don’t have a lot of self-defense capability.”

“Oh.” Molly sighed, “No.”

“And you’re smart, Molly, but you aren’t clever.”

“What?”

“You solve problems very well, and you do research very well, but figuring out people and how to make things work to your advantage? Not so much.”

Molly just looked down at Toby and sighed. “So… what did you want me to know? Or to ask me?”

“First of all,” Jim handed her a card. “Never mind the name on it: that’s my contact information, but it can take a while for me to get the message.”

“Oh! Oh, yes your old number… you never answered that again.”

“Traceable.” He shrugged. “Secondly, if you ever run across a victim that looks like a vampire got to them, or hear anything about vampires, I need you to call me: I just don’t have enough–”

“I think I have!”

“What?”

“We had a murder case where the body must have been moved? Because there wasn’t nearly enough blood on the scene to explain…”

“Missing blood?” Jim smiled, “Good girl, Molly! Tell me more?”

“The only wound was a knife wound, but…”

“Was there a pale patch on their neck or wrist? Or… like new skin? Maybe pink?”

“…I don’t know? Why?”

“Yours is almost gone–it fades fast–but healing up the bite leaves a patch of new skin.”

Molly frowned, “Show me.”

“What?”

She held out her wrist. “Show me?”

“Molly, you won’t remember it…”

“I won’t remember you telling me right now?” Molly said arching an eyebrow.

“Well… yes, you’ll remember that…”

“I need to see what the evidence looks like. Show me.”

“You are a very strange girl, Molly.” Jim grinned, “I underestimated you.”

“People do…” Molly said and then she trailed off, her eyes going vacant and a faint smile on her lips.

Jim only took a little bit, and licked the wound closed carefully. He pushed Molly back up against the sofa. “Molly? Mo-lly…” he sang gently at her.

“Hmmm…? Oh, did I doze off… but…” She frowned, “You were going to bite me?”

“I did.”

“What?” Her eyes tracked down to her wrist and she stared. There was a pale pink spot, like new skin or… like she’d rubbed at an irritation? She brought her wrist up close and stared at it. “That’s IT?”

“Yup.” Jim sighed, “Just a patch of pale skin, or pink… It’s usually pink at first–I guess from blood flow under new skin–and then it’s just a pale patch.” Jim frowned, “It’s much more noticeable on someone with a tan… You have pale skin to start with.”

“I wonder what it would look like on someone with dark skin…” Molly mused. “Have you bitten anyone who wasn’t basically Caucasian?”

“No…” Jim looked thoughtful, “Good point, I should experiment–”

“Not on anyone to hurt them!” Molly protested.

“I’ll just pick up some girl in a club somewhere, don’t worry–they don’t notice… although I cannot afford to lose a day again.”

“What?”

“I think they were on Ecstasy… it was entertaining, but… I lost too much time.”

Molly was getting intent, “Hold on…” She went and came back with her diary and flipped to the back. “So drugs people are on affect you?”

“Well… that one did.” Jim stared at her, “Are you making NOTES?”

“Yes, how else will I figure things out… So you can eat and drink food…” she scribbled in her book.

“Yeeesss? Although things taste different, and… apparently vampiric abilities develop over time… so my sense of taste and smell may keep changing…” She had scribbled notes and was starting a checklist and a grid.

“Ok. Daylight?”

“Knocks me cold. I pass out close to sunrise and… I’ve been working on getting up before sunset but I’m groggy.” Jim grinned, “You were a nerd in school, too, weren’t you?”

“I like lists!” Molly said defensively.

“It’s okay… I had… I didn’t have the luxury. Anyway, according to my bodyguard I’m cold or cool–like room temperature–during the day, and I don’t move or wake up. He also says my pulse slows to almost nothing.”

“But actual daylight doesn’t hurt you?”

“I… don’t think so? I’ve been avoiding it, just to be safe. Once I’m unconscious I couldn’t move out of the light if it did start hurting me.”

“Hmmmm…” Molly was chewing on her pencil. “I’m going to want to talk to this bodyguard… and maybe do some tests… I wonder what your blood looks like under a microscope?”

“Well…. Uh…” Jim was blinking a lot. “You… you’re kind of–”

“I’m strange, I know.”

Jim smiled a bit crookedly, “You kind of remind me of Sherly, honestly, only with more manners and less ego.”

Molly blushed happily. “Ooh! Oh, that’s… that’s really nice of you.”

He sat with her and told her pretty much all he knew. She was impressed with his experiments–it was nice to have someone who appreciated it. He promised to get her a small sample of his blood if she was careful with it.

 _Genius needs an audience,_ Jim admitted. _Sherly-locks had his Watson… apparently we’re time sharing Molly._

“So your blood is addictive?” Molly muttered after he finished telling her about Magnussen. “It is in some stories…”

“I have no idea, I only gave some to Magnussen because he was there and expendable and trying to argue…”

“He sounds awful,” Molly nodded.

“He IS awful,” Jim shrugged, “but useful right now. I got the idea from that movie we watched…”

“Well… be careful? You don’t want to turn him into one!”

“Oh, ugh! No…” _The idea of MAGNUSSEN as a vampire? No!_

“Well…” Molly tapped at the notes, “As far as things to investigate there’s that body… with the suspicious lack of blood? And…someone had to turn you into a vampire…”

“I know!” Jim got up and started pacing angrily. “You have no idea how much it aggravates me that I just don’t KNOW what happened.”

“Well… you said Anderson never… he never got another confirmed vampire case? Did he get suspicious ones?”

“Maybe, and I have the contact information for the locked up hunter.”

She nodded, “Hopefully they can tell you something.”

“It’s… nice to talk to you…” Jim said, surprised a bit that he really meant it.

“I always liked talking to you… I knew you were smart…” she sighed, “but you really were just using me to get to Sherlock.”

“Well, yes, of course I was… but I didn’t know you,” Jim said reasonably. “I did get rather fond of you, and… honestly, Sherlock treats you horribly.”

Molly sighed and doodled in the margins of her chart. “Yeah, I know.”

“…and I did kind of like Glee, although if you tell anyone that I will deny it.”

She laughed, “Really?”

“I don’t like it as much as you do,” Jim shrugged, “but it was fun. Now I have to get going…” he paused and considered a slight change of plans, “I think I’ll arrange for my bodyguard to move in to the building… that will give you an excuse to meet him, and he can help teach you self-defense. He’s a bit rough around the edges still, but if he gives you a hard time just tell me.”

“You’re… a lot nicer than I thought.”

“I am NOT nice…” Jim shook his head. “I just kind of like you and Toby adores you… Don’t ever think I’m NICE Molly.”

Jim walked to the door, petting Toby on the way out, “Toby, look after her: she has surprising taste in men but it’s not safe.”

“Miau.”

“Keep an eye out for suspicious blood loss, and check that body for new skin!” Jim called over his shoulder and left.

Molly walked over and picked Toby up and hugged him. “Poor Jim. People must have been awfully mean to him–he just got mean back instead of hiding in his books like I did. Sherlock probably got bullied too, and he got… like Sherlock.”

Molly went over to her bookshelf and pulled down her book on “making friends”. She looked at all the notes about Sherlock written in between the lines and smiled… turning to a new chapter she started making notes about Jim.

“Likes animals… bullied as a kid…” She’d always liked research.


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Molly, Mycroft, and other things starting with M

Jim phoned Sebastian almost immediately.

“Sir?”

“Question: can you teach someone who is utterly NOT a combatant basic self-defense?”

“Probably not…” Sebastian was surprised by the question but did his best to answer, “Teaching combat I can do, but I’ve mostly taught advanced things to people who have the basics. Teaching a raw beginner is a pretty special skill, really.”

“Damn. Someone has to teach Molly.”

“… that’s the lady you… uh… made think she was hallucinating?”

“Yeah, it broke… I left evidence and she noticed–I wouldn’t be able to tolerate her if she wasn’t smart.” Jim said idly as he contemplated whether to try to see Anderson or move on to the next step.

“Wait… she knows you’re a vampire?!”

“She does now, I just finished going over it all with her–she suggested  some things I hadn’t thought of, and she might have seen another vampire's victim in her morgue.”

“…and she … believes you?” _and hasn’t run screaming?_

“She’s a scientist, Sebastian!”

“Wouldn’t that mean she WOULDN’T believe in vampires?”

“It means she believes evidence,” Jim snorted. “Also she’s a bit on the morbid and odd side.”

Sebastian bit back several responses and finally just said, “if you say so, Sir.  Teaching beginning self-defense is a rather specific skill, and… honestly teaching a girl is a bit different.”

Jim frowned, “why?”

“They tend to be smaller and lighter.  They have more strength in their legs than upper body on average, so the best moves for them are probably different,”  he considered all the things he’d heard discussed about it. “Also MOST girls are pretty heavily socialized not  to hit people.”

“So… it would be better if she was taught by someone who not only knew how to teach beginners but knew how to teach women?”

“Yes sir.”

“Fine. Then we go to Denmark as planned and I’ll try to find someone to teach her.”

“You never did tell me what the plan was?”

“I’ll give you some business to do and then we leave first thing when I wake up tomorrow night.”

~

It was almost evening and Sebastian was trying to do some shopping.  _God my sleep schedule was going to be all kinds of messed up_. A black sedan coasted to a stop next to him–Sebastian frowned.  The door opened and a man got out of the passenger side front–he had SIS all over him.

“Mister Moran?”

“Maybe.”

The man opened the back door and gestured for him to get in–someone  was already in the back.  Sebastian cocked his head and noted the placement of the cuffs, and the shoes… he nodded and got in.

“What made you decide to get in?” He asked, and tapped the partition to the front.

“You’re the fellow that was talking to DI Lestrade.”

Mycroft Holmes’ eyes fixed on him, “You noticed that… how curious.”

“I’m a sniper; I have to notice.”  Sebastian shrugged, “No point not getting in, you could have me hauled wherever we’re going. So what do you want?”

“There are small elements about this entire event that don’t make sense.”

Sebastian sighed, “Tell me something I don’t know.” Sebastian was beginning to wonder if he’d desecrated a shrine or pissed off a Djinn.

“What is your association with Mister Magnussen?”

 _Pissed off an Ifrit, totally_. Sebastian winced. “Blackmail, mostly–he had his hooks into my sister, because of that… that…”

“I see.”  They sat quietly for a bit before Mycroft continued, “You are being unexpectedly forthcoming?”

 _No point in lying, just… don’t mention it all._ “I was about ready to shoot myself, or shoot him and swing for it,” He sighed. “Look, I have a temper… a fact that that scum seemed to forget. As soon as my sister was out of his reach? Well… one or both of us would be dead.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time you killed for her.”

Sebastian flinched. “I’d say I don’t know what you mean, but…”

Mycroft was glancing away when he said, “I thought it would take more effort for you to admit to murdering her former boyfriends.” So he didn’t see the momentary startlement in Sebastian’s eyes.

“Not… all of them.” Sebastian hesitated… _if he didn’t know my sister’s history_ … “She’s… she loves too easily, and too deeply, and she gets hurt.”

Mycroft nodded– _as I thought_ – “I have–had– a younger brother: I understand all too well, even if his difficulties were somewhat different.”

“My condolences.” Sebastian cocked his head thoughtfully, “Are you… offering me a job?”

“Possibly. You seemed to be packing to go somewhere?”

Sebastian considered what Jim had said about the man and decided to continue with truths, if not honesty. “I was going to Denmark, actually.”

“Mister Magnussen…” Mycroft smiled–it was not a friendly smile- “ recently had some setbacks to his health…”

“So I heard.” Sebastian bared his teeth, “I thought I would pay a sick bed visit… unless you have a problem with it?”

Mycroft looked amused, “No…as long as you retrieve a few things.”

“Like what?”

“He has blackmail on a few other people as well.  If at all possible I need to know where his drop points are–who is holding the physical evidence– and if anyone else has his information. I read your file, Colonel…I believe you are well trained to retrieve the information.”

Sebastian sat back, “I am, and completely disavowable because of my past–clever.”

Mycroft just nodded.

“So what’s it worth to you?”

Mycroft named a figure that exceeded any of Sebastian’s expectations, “and a bonus for retrieving or silencing all of the information.”

“You said you had a brother…Mister…?”

“Holmes, Mycroft Holmes.”

Sebastian nodded, “I expect you understand that I take any threat or leverage on my sister… poorly?”

“I do. People… sometimes tried to get to me through my brother–Magnussen among them.”

“I’m very sorry, given how the scum treated me…”

“Magnussen had not yet gotten very close, but… his papers helped to ruin him.”

“I thought that’s who you meant.” Sebastian nodded. “So this is personal… I get that.”

“The other person I would revenge myself on is dead already,” Mycroft said quietly, “All I can do now is work against what remains–one thread of which was your sister’s former lover.”

“…who worked for Moriarty…” _God damn this is complicated_. Sebastian rubbed his forehead.

 “Precisely.”

Sebastian put his head back and wondered how in hell things had ever gotten this complicated, ever.

“I’m afraid my time is at an end.” Mycroft said politely, “Where would you like to go?”

“I was going to a friend’s house… if you could just put me back where you found me that would be good.”

“Of course.”

Sebastian thought about it. Jim had saved her life, and Jim wanted her set up with Watson, which was actually a pretty good idea… and Mycroft Holmes was involved… Sebastian rolled the dice in his head and made a decision. “Mister Holmes… your… brother…?”

“Yes?” Mycroft hoped the frost in his tone would be enough of a warning.

“I read… he was friends with a Captain Watson?”

Mycroft blinked–not what he had expected, “Yes?”

“Captain and Doctor John Watson… ?”

“Yesss?”  Mycroft suddenly remembered which regiments Captain Watson had _actually_ been in and breathed, “You served with him…”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yes, he… he and my brother were close.” He frowned at him, “not that way.”

“John? I’d be shocked if he was… always seemed into girls.  I was thinking… if you could ask him to look after Rosemund.  He has sister issues too; we used to talk…”

Mycroft nodded slowly, “It might do him well to have someone to look after in fact.”

“He was a good bloke, a bit crazy and temper issues like you wouldn’t believe, but… he won’t lead my sister on, or hurt her like that...”

“I would like to talk to you more about your dealings with Captain Watson, but… this is where we part company.” He nodded.

Sebastian got out and got handed his bags–yup, right back where they started.  Once the car pulled away he started walking.  When he got to someplace between cameras he texted Jim:

“Boss, you will not believe the discussion I just had…”

 


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mags bashing (some discussions of canon suicide )
> 
> NOTE: i am having severe computer issues and wanted to get this posted before anything else happened, please forgive any typos

He didn’t have much opportunity to talk to Jim in person until they were on route to Denmark, and then he spelled out the entire encounter with Mister Holmes- and his arrangements to get the information from Magnussen.

Sebastian was concerned that Jim would be upset about it, but he mostly looked amused. “So you get paid for minor variations on what you’d be doing for me anyway? Good job.”

“I… was concerned you might be upset- and I did try to tell you as soon as I could…”

“You managed to avoid giving anything away, came up with an extremely plausible cover story, and got yourself a bonus- however off the books- from the Iceman himself?  I’m not upset, Sebastian, I’m impressed: I would have been furious if you hadn’t told me though.”

“I suggested setting my sister up with Watson…”

Jim cocked his head, “it will look far less suspicious if Mycroft KNOWS why they met…” he nodded, “just don’t forget who got her out of that sticky situation and put all the blame on her dear soon-to-be-departed ex.”

“Yes, sir… I… am quite grateful.” Sebastian stayed silent for a while before clearing his throat, “uh, sir?”

“Hmm?” Jim never looked up from whatever he was doing on his phone.

“You ARE going to let me take Magnussen out? Right?”

“As soon as I’m done testing a few theories? Absolutely.” Jim looked up thoughtfully, “Oh, also you’ll probably have to behead him and burn the body.” And he looked back down.

_…my life is so fucked up._

When they arrived in Denmark they checked into a hotel for the day, and then the next evening they went to Magnussen’s home.  Jim sauntered onto the bastard’s property like he owned it and when one of the guards tried to ask too many questions he just looked over his sunglasses and said, “Faint.”

He went down like someone had cut his strings. Jim simply stepped over him and into the house.

“That…” Sebastian chewed his lip. “That’s what you did to my sister’s boyfriend… what you expected–” _of me_. “Why didn’t you do that to me?”

“You’re resistant, remember? A fact I find eminently useful–as long as you behave.” He looked over and smiled, unreadable behind his glasses, “You did make a promise, Tiger, and if you want a piece of Magnussen you better be very, very sure of keeping that.”

Suddenly a shaken voice interrupted, “You!  you… you can’t…” and Magnussen was standing in disheveled clothes, looking … hung over, or maybe like a junkie, but NOT at all like the cool, in control bastard Sebastian remembered.

Jim took off his glasses, “Is that anyway to say hello, Mags?”

Magnussen choked back a noise. “I–I want…”

“Yeeesss?” Jim just cocked his head and looked like the devil himself come to claim his due.

Magnussen slowly slid to his knees. He may have muttered, “Please kill me.”

“Holy shit…” Sebastian breathed.

~

Jim laughed, “Oh I will… or more likely I’ll let Sebastian here do it–eventually.  You remember Sebastian don’t you?”

Mags eyes tracked up and finally focused on Sebastian: the look of rage that was there for a moment was priceless. “So you… you used the leverage I had…”

“Your leverage?” Jim’s lip curled.  _As if I needed to be that crude–Mags was always crude–better to work with gratitude or sheer terror than a choke chain like blackmail_.

Jim snapped his fingers, “Get up and take us to a nice private room, Mags.”

He did; Sebastian trailing behind them. When they got to privacy, Jim settled himself down in what had to be Magnussen’s chair: Sebastian rather warily taking up a guard position flanking him.  Magnussen mostly looking torn between fury and that strange desperate look…

But the cool arrogant look he usually had was entirely absent.

“No Mags, I didn’t use your leverage… in fact I parlayed his sister’s little situation to my benefit.” Jim smirked, “You know, I could almost thank you for trying to kill me… except that this result isn’t what you planned...”

“You… should be dead…” Magnussen managed to get out.

“Yes, well… I’ve never been very good at taking orders, darling… pity you didn’t leave well enough alone with our arrangement–it would have spared you so much unpleasantness…”  Jim was honestly getting tired of playing with him– _and I never thought that could happen_ – so he had him call in a few guards one at a time.  Once Jim was done feeding from and controlling them, and watching Magnussen get more and more desperate looking, he smiled…

“Did you WANT something?  On your knees, Mags, at my feet… and you only have yourself to blame for it.”

~

Sebastian had watched with increasing fascination and terror as Jim… bit… the guards, and then ordered them around.  They went blank and still when he bit them, and didn’t seem to remember quite what had happened.  He found himself rubbing at his arm and wrist and stealing glances at the patch of pink new skin there…

Watching Magnussen crawl forward on his knees? It was glorious… and creepy.

…and then Jim bit his own wrist and…Sebastian swallowed hard and tried not to be ill. Blood never bothered him, but there was something so very wrong in the way Magnussen looked repulsed and desperate at the same time, and the soft, vacant and then increasingly fascinated look when he did drink it…

_I wonder what’s so great about it?_

_Shudder_

~

Jim licked his wrist and waited until he regained a few wits. “You… you gave Sherlock drugs, Mags…” Jim hissed. “Not only could you have killed him–bad enough–but you endangered that brilliant brain of his…”

“Just… business… just an asset…”

Jim smiled tightly, “Well this isn’t JUST business– it’s personal too–but I assure you I’ll get some profit out of it.”  Jim tilted his head, “a lot of profit.”

He looked up at Sebastian, “Mycroft wanted Magnussen’s blackmail didn’t he?”

“Yes, sir.” Sebastian was staring at Magnussen in a sort of fascinated horror.

“We’ll give him SOME, the rest you couldn’t get hold of naturally…”

“I… take it he’ll tell YOU where it is?”

“Of COURSE he will… won’t you Mags?”

“N-n…” he struggled for a moment–which was fascinating to watch–and then collapsed, “Yes, of course.”

 _Time to remind my bodyguard of exactly what I saved him from._ “Now… what were you planning to do with Sebastian, Mags? If things had gone the way you wanted…”

“Use him to assassinate some people…”

“Mmm-Hmm… planning on taking him to bed? You do tend to do that…”

“Once he was…in too deep to get out, yes, just… to make it clear…”

Jim considered and glanced at Sebastian, “Ah yes, put him down… make it clear who’s on top… but I doubt that was all you had in mind…”

Magnussen had some kind of hatred or pride fueled resistance and looked up, “He’s not my type, unlike runaway rent boys who–”

“Mags…” Jim sighed and held up a finger–Magnussen shut his mouth and glared for a moment before looking away. “Really?  Old history again?” he glanced over at Sebastian, “I believe you said you wanted to hit him?”

“A lot… sir.” Sebastian opened and closed his hands and grinned.

“As it happens I want to test the supposed healing properties of vampire blood… so… let’s find someplace a bit easier to clean up, shall we?”

~

Sebastian was a bit surprised to find that Magnussen actually had some muscle under the clothes, but it was just that he was fairly fit–nothing extraordinary.  Jim told Magnussen he was allowed to try to hit back–just for the duration of the test: just while we were in this room– but he mostly looked like he was going to piss himself.

“Does it matter where I hit him?”

“Just in case he doesn’t heal up properly, do try to avoid anything that could kill him outright or interfere with his voice.” Jim had one of Magnusson’s outside guards standing at his elbow–that guy looked like he wanted a shot at Magnussen too.

Sebastian looked at the slimy bastard and grinned, “Oh… this is going to feel so good…” he feinted with a simple punch and the guy predictably threw his arms up and tried to duck.  Sebastian grinned and kicked him–hard.

He didn’t so much scream as shriek.   Magnussen started whining and begging and trying to bribe him–as if that was going to work– and Sebastian just laughed and punched him.

Then he punched him again.

Then he got a rhythm going…

“tiger…”

Magnussen was pissing himself all over the floor and Sebastian was having fun…

“Tiger… enough.”

He tried to hurt Rose, and he was going to try to make me into some kind of boy toy? This  slimy blackmailing…?

“John Sebastian Augustus Moran!!”

Sebastian froze as his full name was… _what? Wait, that wasn’t… oh… Jim?_ “err… Boss?”

Jim looked annoyed. “Can you pick him up and drag him over? I need to find out if I can heal him or we have to call an ambulance.”

Sebastian tracked back over at a… bloody wreck…oh… uh…”Sorry? Kind of got carried away…”

“While I sympathize, I need him alive a bit longer.”

Jim fed him some more blood… and… the unfortunate noises he was making when he inhaled started to settle…

“Get me that guard I didn’t like…”

They did: Jim drained him almost dry and then fed Magnussen some more. By the time he was done Magnussen looked like he’d been mugged… a week ago; not like he was going to be in the hospital for a week.

~

“I’m obviously going to have to get some more dinner on hand if that gets repeated…”

“I am sorry, I just…”

“He has a punch-able face, I know…”  Jim shrugged, “but we need him alive and functional… for now.”

Jim and Sebastian spent the next week as Magnussen’s guests. Jim got all the drop points and hard copies of his blackmail–or at least the locations of it– and spent a lot of time in an office with the man memorizing the things that didn’t exist in hard copy. A surprising amount was just information in Magnussen’s head– _like my own history; there weren’t any records, really._

The second time he had Mags darling beaten up he let someone else do it, and watched them carefully–good thing, too: he went for some shots that could have been very bad.  Still, enough blood and he was up and around within a day or two at the worst.  Jim made a point of going out to clubs to eat, and calling in some of the LOCAL blackmail victims for dinner–if they ‘remembered’ that Mags had talked to them and been his usual slimy self? So what.

Sebastian swore he could behave and Jim let him  run the tests after that…Magnussen still whined and cowered under the beatings, but he didn’t try to avoid them–in fact he looked like a part of him wanted it, or at least the dose of blood that followed–and he healed: he healed fast after every dose.

Sebastian lost enthusiasm for beating him after the third or fourth time.  By then Jim was actually bored with it and would have preferred to cut Mag’s throat, but the research was important. It wasn’t a constant round of beatings, of course, Jim traveled to retrieve items from their drop locations and do a bit of research, so Mags got regular breaks.  Of course he didn’t get the obviously addictive hit of the blood unless he got beaten first.

By the end of the third week Magnussen was starting to look forward to Sebastian hitting him, judging from his expression… _Operant conditioning–gotta love it._ Jim had to assume that any other vampires out there used this–they’d be fools not to–but… _where are they? And how did I end up one of them?_

 “Sir…” Sebastian was shifting from foot to foot–Jim was pretty sure he knew what he was going to say. “I never thought I would say this, but… can you get someone else to hurt him? Or better yet, let me kill him?” _Got it in one._

 “Yes.” Jim nodded, “We’ve retrieved most of his blackmail and I have almost everything we need. We’re done with him.”

 “Never thought I’d get tired of hitting him.”

“Truthfully I got bored of watching it after the second time…” Jim smiled, “But it was research–and so is killing him.”

“How is killing him research?”

“I still don’t know how I woke up…” Jim looked at him and shrugged, “What the fuck, not like it matters now–I was bipolar.”

“Wait…? Manic-depressive?”

"If you want to use that phrase.  On a manic swing I would take really idiotic risks–luckily I’m a genius so I usually got away with it: not always though.”  Jim sighed and considered the foolish assumption that he could just… ignore… an interrogation–that they couldn’t hurt him. _Yeah that was mania in action._

He shook himself out of it. “One of the worst things that can happen is when you get a bit manic–lots of energy and  you feel like you can get away with ANYTHING–but you have symptoms of depression…” Jim stared at the wall over Sebastian’s shoulder, “It happened sometimes just because my brain chemistry hates me… but this time the problem was Mags found out I was filling my migraine prescription at the same pharmacy all the time–definitely idiocy on my part–and he had the drug tampered with… so… I went manic… and suicidal… except I was manic enough that I didn’t really think I would die… not really… or maybe I just couldn’t think properly at all: I just wanted to win.”

Sebastian nodded slowly, “you said you…put a gun to your head.”

“I put a gun in my mouth, aimed correctly, and blew my brain stem out… Molly got a look at it and she confirmed that I should be so much dead meat… Mags did it–he killed me.”  Jim smiled and let the fangs show, “and then I woke up.”

“And you don’t… remember ever meeting a vampire before? Or how… how that happened?”

“No, but as you’ve seen… if I was bitten or given blood and ordered to forget?”

“So… Oh, you want to kill Mags and see if he… wakes up?”

“Precisely… and to make sure it’s as close as possible, I’m going to have him shoot himself in the head.” Jim snickered, “Sauce for the goose, you know…”

 


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TW for canon-type suicide in the first section.

Charles was once again called in.  He’d healed enough from the last beating so it must be time again, and that meant more… more…  he wanted to hate this, he wanted to NOT want it… but he wanted it so badly… he was even beginning to take pleasure in the beatings, knowing how  they would end…

 _I wonder if that’s why some people find masochism interesting? Because it leads to the endorphins?_  He certainly had a better understanding of addictions.

He came in to find Moriarty sitting there as he usually did- _at least he didn't make me crawl anymore_ – and Moran... but Sebastian wasn’t stripped down to beat him?  Moriarty had a gun…

“It’s finally over then?”  He should have felt relief, or fear, but he just felt empty.

“Of course, Mags: I was never going to keep you around… Now you kill yourself.”

“Can I have… more? First?”

“Sadly no, trying to keep this experiment running properly!” Moriarty smiled cheerfully and handed him the pistol…

 _Ah, yes._  Charles had figured out early on that Moriarty didn't understand how he became a vampire– the experiments were exploring his own abilities… _so this meant that he thought I might become a vampire?  Like him?_

He put the gun to his mouth eagerly… _if I became one as well I would rule the world…_

~

The blood spatter was a mess:  ruined a lot of perfectly good furnishings and a nice rug, but it would have been out of character for him to do it anywhere else.

“So, now his guards ‘find him’ and call, and then it gets revealed that he had that terrible medical condition…” Jim smiled happily, “And he gets taken to the morgue.”

“What if… what if he does… wake up?” Sebastian couldn't think of anything worse.

“Then we kill him again.”

“But if he gets… abilities…” Sebastian was very worried, “shouldn't we just keep him here? And watch?”

“It would be lovely, but then we’d have to explain too much.” Jim shrugged, “I’ve gotten my hooks into everyone important- and his will specified cremation.”

It all went perfectly with authorities coming and taking pictures and guards assuring them that no one else had been here...and then his doctor showing up– the doctor Magnussen had been blackmailing and that Jim had very thoroughly under control– and testifying about Magnussen having gotten positive test results for something quite painful and… well… he’d been so ill.

_Smirk_

They took the body away.

…

Sebastian was NOT happy.  He was at the morgue before sunset because damn whatever Jim said about it: Magnussen with vampire abilities was too awful to contemplate.  Jim had said that in his case he woke up in the morgue– possibly that  evening or maybe the next evening– and Sebastian was going to be there with a Gurkha knife and a blow torch.

Jim showed up eventually.

“Nothing?”

“I haven't heard anything,” Sebastian nodded at the drawer, “but I wasn't going to unlock it until you were here.”

Jim pulled the drawer open and uncovered him: he looked really dead–not like Jim sleeping or whatever, but really, really, dead.

“Hmm.” Jim pulled the cover back further and contemplated. “That’s… interesting.”  Then he started poking around in Magnussen’s mouth.

“What’s interesting?”

“Some of his bruises are gone… and his teeth are just a hair sharper.”

“What?”  Sebastian edged up, “Is it just taking longer?”

“I have no idea, isn't it fascinating?”

“No. Can I behead him?”

“Not… yet...I want to let this play out.”

…

God only knows what the examiners did, but after another day he was released to Jim’s lawyers.  Jim had set himself up as some kind of nephew or cousin or something–anyway he apparently inherited some of the estate, and was the listed executor.  He brought the body back to the house and had him set up for a viewing. Sebastian didn’t trust the slimy fucker so he stayed on guard.

“I thought you said he was going to be cremated.”  Sebastian said when Jim finally woke up and came into the room.

“He will be.  I just want to see if this progresses or… not.” Jim smirked, “Oh, I need you to contact Mycroft and give him the update.  Here: I have the cover story all worked out.”

Sebastian looked it over–it made as much sense as anything, and it explained a few things… as to the rest he would just have to pretend to be confused: things went badly in the field, stuff happened…

And then Magnussen gasped.

Jim watched in fascination as Magnussen’s body tried to put itself together: the wound in the back of his head started to knit closed and then… didn't;  his teeth showed fangs and then… his entire jaw degraded and several of his teeth fell out.

Sebastian was swearing vehemently in several languages and backing away.

Jim simply watched. Watched as for one moment there was life and hatred and fear in Magnussen’s eyes and then? Glassy and dull, like old fish… and more of his brains started leaking out...and Jim’s increasingly sensitive nose caught  the smells of decay and rot that he had most definitely NOT been smelling up until now.

“He didn't make it.” Jim marveled, “He… started to change, but he didn't make it.”

“Is he DEAD?! Seriously, get away from him and I burn the body!” Sebastian sounded quite upset, and Jim turned to see him aiming a gun rather steadily–remarkably steadily considering his panicked expression.

“He’s dead.  He’s quite dead, and you don't burn the body; we just get him picked up by the crematorium.”  Jim shrugged. “I wonder what made the difference?  Why he didn't make it through and I did?”

“Don’t know, don’t care: you may be a weird guy, but having THAT slime with your powers? No!”

Sebastian insisted on accompanying the body all the way through cremation.  Between Jim’s–or Magnussen’s–money, and Sebastian insisting it was a religious thing– escorting the body to the afterlife, kind of like a Viking funeral only without the boat– they just pretended he wasn't there, and...Magnussen was reduced to the contents of a small box.

Jim took the box from him when he came back and smiled. “Now you REALLY have to call Mycroft.”

After Sebastian left to do that Jim let his fingers trail over the box, “You almost made it… so obviously being fed blood is what happened to me...if everyone who was only bitten and fed from transformed we’d be hip deep in vampires, so it isn't just that.  Someone fed me their blood, and unlike you i made it through…” 

 _Who was it? Do I even remember ever seeing them? Why?_  “Blood is a precious commodity, so it wouldn't have been given to me on a whim–I had to replace everything I gave you.” Jim started pacing around slowly, continuing to talk to Magnussen’s ashes- _maybe I should get a skull like Sherlock had? Maybe I should borrow his skull? He’s not using it right now…_

“Was I hurt? Did they feed me to heal me and go on?  But then why would they?  No...Did they hurt me? Perhaps not intending to? If they fed from me and took too much, or left marks…” _None of that fit…_ “or did they just need to guarantee that I would do what they wanted and forget it?’ _that sounded most likely._

Jim nodded to himself. “I’m a genius; control over me wasn’t reliable: after all, MOLLY broke the suggestion and realized I was real because I had left evidence.  They couldn't be positive it would hold, so they fed me blood… that makes sense…”

Jim stopped pacing and stood drumming his fingers on the mantle next to the box. “Best case scenario is: I saw too much, or they wanted something from me, and were trying to ensure I would obey, and wouldn't remember, and they moved on.  Worst case scenario: they knew who and what I was…in which case they had no idea I would die soon enough afterwards to risk me transforming… or… they didn't know the risk?” _What if they were just figuring it out too…_

 _And I don't remember any of it_. “Damn it!” Jim walked away from the mantle and sat down in one of the chairs, brooding.

_Still too many unanswered questions, and… if I ever do run into them they would obviously be older...more powerful...more experienced…_

_But they were either arrogant, or careless, if they didn't think I would make it: probably never ran a test, never had a reason to.  So that’s my edge. The fact that I know I made it through, and they don’t._

~

Sebastian honestly expected to leave a message, but someone answered the contact phone number, and when he asked for Mycroft Holmes he got transferred…

“Colonel… I hear your trip was at least partly successful,” Mycroft Holmes’ precise voice.

“Mostly successful, if a bit odd,” he answered- _true that_. “I got a great deal of information about drop locations and so on; although it turns out he kept everything that didn't need hard copy in his head.”

“Did he?”   Mycroft considered that- _I keep a great deal in my head that others would need written… its far more secure… yes, if it didn't need hard copy_ … “That makes sense, although some things do need documentation”

“Well, I got some drop locations,” he smiled into the phone, “after I paid him back for a lot of misery–a couple other people got some shots in, too.”

 _Hmmm…“_ Reports are that he had cancer?”

Sebastian grinned into the phone. “Reports are from the local doctor that he was blackmailing.  He WAS ill, but not lethally so… but the doctor was kind enough to adjust his records in exchange for his blackmail being forgotten about.”

“Ah.” Mycroft tapped a pen and considered- _photo evidence had him looking quite unwell as he left for Denmark, but it was also sudden: he’d looked quite alright not long before that.  Very well, he had been ill-perhaps poisoned? Likely.  The cancer diagnosis being made up by a blackmailed doctor? Quite reasonable… but_ : “The official word was he killed himself: how did you manage that?”

Sebastian had been prepared for this: Jim had told him exactly how to handle it: “Let’s just say,” and he let himself remember the first time he’d beaten the man– he could almost feel the impact, hear him beg– “Let’s just say he preferred it to the alternative… but  the reports were slightly adjusted.  It was amazing how many people really wanted him dead.”

“I can’t say I’m surprised.  He has a cousin who inherited?”

“Yes.  Another person he kept under his thumb as much as he could,” Sebastian nodded and then decided to deviate from the script just slightly and tell the truth, “classic twink and got into a lot of trouble when he was younger.”

Mycroft listened–Moran had a history of homophobic violence, but also a history of homosexual liaisons– he feigned ignorance of the term: “Ah… an… attractive young man, I believe that means?”

Sebastian blurted out, “Well he is, but it doesn’t mean– it means tight jeans and a loose ass–err… ah…”

 _Ah, Moran was attracted to him, and was conflicted… interesting._ Mycroft repeated, with a confused tone, “Tight jeans and… I beg your pardon?”

Sebastian winced, “A twink is a gay guy who looks young and… usually kind of easy?”  He sighed, “Sorry… it’s just what I thought of him in the club…” _Oh hell._

 _Met him in a club… that would explain the sightings of Moran with a young man at a few clubs near Magnussen’s home over the past few weeks._ “I am not familiar with… club slang?” Mycroft lied smoothly, being quite familiar with most dialects, “So you met this cousin in a club and worked with him?”

“Right.” Sebastian cleared his throat, “Anyway… his cousin? Nephew? Whatever… was pretty glad to see the guy go...even if he didn't need to know the details.”

Mycroft made a note for future reference and moved on to more important matters. “So the drop locations?”

Sebastian switched to business with great relief, and gave him the drop locations Jim had given him.

“Lovely.  When do you think you will be back in England; I may have a possibility of work for you.”

“Soon, I hope.  How is Rose?”

“Mary Morstan, I believe you mean: she is quite well and just took a job at a clinic with a Doctor Watson…”

Sebastian felt a weight lift from his shoulders, “Thank you...I...I worry about her.”

Mycroft felt a tug of sympathy–terribly uncomfortable– “I do understand.  I have to get back to other matters, however.”

 _So Sebastian Moran was attracted to Magnussen’s heir and uncomfortable with that attraction… but he didn't sound like it was going to become violent… possibly because he’d worked out his aggression against Magnussen himself?_  Mycroft smiled as he recalled that many forms of cancer led to fragile capillaries and thus bruising–no doubt the diagnosis was used to both explain his ‘suicide’ and cover up the extensive skin discoloration. _Lovely._

~

Sebastian spent a few minutes pulling himself together before he went back to talk to Jim.

“How badly did that GO?” Jim stared at him.

“Err…”

Jim pinched the bridge of his nose, “Should I just listen to the recording?”

“Probably.” Sebastian muttered.

It sounded worse hearing it replayed– _I sound like an idiot_.

Jim turned around and smirked, “Still think I look that fuckable?”

“yes. wait! What?!”

Jim looked him over–he hadn’t had more than a beer or two a day in weeks, and he’d been taking the vitamins… “You are a nice looking man, Sebastian, but I don’t get the impression you’re exactly skilled in bed with another man.”

Jim was eyeing his ass. “No! I mean, look, fine, you’re good looking and the intelligence and…” _wait this wasn’t what I wanted to say,_ “Are you controlling me or something?”

“I CAN’T control you, Sebastian.” Jim was snickering.

“Oh… right… uh…”

“I’m a bit peckish, and you should have finally cleaned up enough to not taste like… what was it that horrible movie said? ‘The Volga at low tide’, so why don’t we table anything else until later, hmm?”

“I’m not a buffet?”

“Yes you are.” Jim reminded him, “If I say you are. Anyway it doesn’t hurt–you’ve seen that.”

“I KNOW it doesn’t hurt…” _you just go numb and blank–I remember that… at the time that’s what I wanted._

 _Did he sound… disappointed_? Jim grinned. “Do you want it to?”

“What?”

“I could tie you down and use a knife, instead… you’d be able to watch and feel it…”  
  
“No!”

“I could also just have you in my bed and make you scream for other reasons…”

“Uh… no… I mean No!”

Jim snickered, “Tell you what, Sebastian, tonight I’m just going to have a quick bite and plan our next moves… then we go pick up the vampire hunter, and then?  Then I take you to a club when you’re sober and we see if you want to say no after that.”

  



End file.
